


Toxicity

by harcourt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Caretaking, D/s-verse, I wrote this for the kinkmeme, Illness, M/M, Mentions of past abuse, Palladium Poisoning, abusive behaviour, but Clint style, deteriorating mental state, maybe dub-con later, mentions of past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-15 23:33:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/10266.html?thread=21999642#t21999642">this prompt</a>.</p><p>  <i>Tony is Clint's surprisingly good dom. Despite his attitude everywhere else, he's patient, kind, gentle. Everything is going pretty good.</i></p><p><i>And then Tony starts behaving erratically. At first it's mild, so that anything Clint describes seems like normal Tony behavior to anyone else--maybe just a bit had-a-bad-day levels of off--but then it gets worse.</i> </p><p>In which Clint plays medical detective, or at least baby sitter, and Tony is not acting normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Like my other longer fic, I write in one long file, then I'm post as I find good places to break it up, so chapter lengths may be a bit erratic.

"I don't know, Clint," Bruce said, kind of like Clint had thought he would, " _Tony made fun of me_ isn't exactly red flag behaviour." Neither was 'Tony said something mean' which was the other phrasing he'd been thinking of going with. It all sounded so childish and _sensitive_.

Clint frowned and rested his chin on folded arms, slumped on Bruce's work table and didn't care that he looked like he was peevishly sulking. That was the problem. No one--and by no one, he meant Bruce--would listen to him. Tony being a bit of a shithead wasn't unusual, or weird, or anything Clint himself wouldn't tune out, most of the time, but Tony was mostly a shithead only in certain contexts. 

Or really, to be more accurate, there were contexts in which Tony _wasn't_ a shithead. _Wouldn't_ be. It was a big part of why Clint was with him at all. He fiddled with a device on Bruce's table until Bruce took it away, then moved on to toy with an eyedropper, drawing up about a teaspoon of Bruce's coffee before squeezing the bulb and sending it splashing back into his mug.

"You don't even know what I've been using that for," Bruce said, "I might have been poisoned if I hadn't see you doing that." 

Bruce would be fine. The Hulk would make sure of it. Clint didn't say so.

Bruce sighed. "Fine," he said and sat back from his work, folding his arms over his chest in a way that clearly said he was humoring Clint and thought Clint was wasting his time. "What did he say." There wasn't a question mark at the end of it. Clint could tell from his tone.

"I don't want to repeat it." Not because it had been bad, but because it _hadn't_ been. It would make Clint look totally pathetic and fragile if Bruce knew exactly how much of a _nothing_ it had been. "It wasn't a big deal," he added, in case Bruce thought that the reason he wouldn't tell was because it had been actually awful.

Because Tony _was_ sometimes awful and none of them would really be surprised by him being snippy in the bedroom. Clint fidgeted. The whole thing was going not-to-plan. The whole thing was pretty much going sideways. Clint wasn't a planner and this sort of thing was why.

Bruce kept looking at him, a little worriedly, like he was no longer sure that Clint was wasting his time and like he maybe thought Tony didn't know how to treat subs properly. 

"It's not like that," Clint snapped, straightening and throwing the eyedropper down. It bounced off the table and rolled, then fell off the edge. A serious miscalculation. Clint pretended not to notice the snaff-up, but Bruce looked down as it hit the floor then gave Clint another dose of that worried look, this time with extra bit of worry and a little less _stop bothering me_.

Clint felt insulted on Tony's behalf. "He's usually really nice to me," he said, sounding sulky again. God. What the hell was going on with him. Maybe Bruce was right. Maybe he was taking it way too personally. He knew subs who sounded the way he sounded right now, and as a general rule, he mocked them behind their backs.

It was like Tony had promised and failed to call him. 

But then, Tony _had_ promised and failed to call him. On multiple occasions and most of the time Clint hadn't even cared because he tended to do the same to Tony. Had forgotten, several times over, that anyone was supposed to call anyone. Tony wasn't always that good with schedules if no one was reminding him of them and nagging about it, and Clint was often just not paying that much attention, or busy. He didn't over react like this. It wasn't his thing.

But it wasn't _Tony's_ thing to snip at him when they were alone. At least, not when Clint was _listening_. Not when things were far enough along that every third word out of Tony's mouth made his stomach flip in that good-bad scary-safe way. He couldn't always unravel it, and Tony knew that. Tony made sure that good-bad scary-safe would balance out on the good and safe side, in the end, and during, mostly. 

Tony didn't pick on him or tease him, or pretend he couldn't see it when things were spinning out of Clint's control way too fast. It was so, so easy for Clint to fall back into bad and scared, and Tony knew it and made sure it didn't happen.

But Clint would be damned if he said so to Bruce. Bruce was already looking at him like he was being dramatic and maybe something of a princess and if someone had whined the same story to Clint that he'd just whined to Bruce, he'd probably think the same thing.

"Never mind," Clint said, and almost stole Bruce's coffee before he remembered the eyedropper and Bruce's comment about getting poisoned.

\-----

"If you want a relationship counselor," Bruce said, the next time he came to the lab to talk about Tony being weird, "I'm not that kind of doctor."

" _Bruce,_ " Clint said, and stood there and fidgeted and knew his hair was standing up at all different angles and his clothes were kind of rumpled and disheveled. 

"Jesus," Bruce said after he'd had time to process the visual, and gave Clint his coffee, but mostly Clint suspected, so he'd have something to do with hands other than fuck with Bruce's tools. "Do I even want to know what you're about to tell me?"

Clint considered if he really wanted to tell Bruce in the first place. Bruce wasn't taking him seriously, and fair enough. He wouldn't take himself seriously at this point, except he'd probably be more sympathetic to the fact that he'd obviously come straight here from Tony's and how that was a sign that he was at least honestly upset. 

"Tony," Clint started, and tried to figure out how to word it this time.

"What?" Bruce gave him that cold look that Clint had long ago learned to ignore from doms and sure as fuck wasn't going to humor coming from Bruce. It didn't really have anything to do with Clint anyway. It was Bruce's you're-acting-strange-and-scaring-me-so-I'm-going-to-pretend-I-have-control look. 

It was actually maybe a bit telling that Clint could identify it, but Bruce looked the same way sometimes when he thought he was about to Hulk out.

"It's nothing," Clint said, even though he was the one that was convinced it was something, and Bruce the one who had more or less told him he was an idiot. He should have straightened himself out more before coming to find Bruce. Now Bruce was over reacting and maybe coming up with all sorts of twisted scenarios in his head.

There was no getting to the middle ground that Clint wanted with him. The middle ground where someone would listen, but not freak out.

And there was only one person he could rely on for that, really.

\----

Thor wasn't anything. Asgard didn't have definitions and roles in the same way that they did down on Earth, and from what Clint could gather, people in Asgard pretty much did what they wanted however they wanted and it didn't make them one thing or the other. They had subs, but it didn't make them subs, and they had doms, but it didn't make them doms, either. Just people with preferences, which sounded kind of fucking great, but also like it might be hard to put out a personal ad. 

The whole thing made Thor a surprisingly reasonable and level-headed source of advice--a fact which Natasha had discovered and passed on to Clint, and they used him maybe a little shamelessly as a sort of relationship magic-8 ball, but where the result wasn't a three word answer, but a lengthy epic with a tidy moral at the end.

Clint had asked if they could cut straight to the moral, once, because that was the useful part, and been told that they couldn't. Clint suspected Thor was just buying think time, but it was worth it sometimes to just listen to Thor talk and talk and know he was actually considering the problem. 

Clint found him in the living room and told him about what Tony had said--or rather, just that Tony was saying stuff, and more stuff, more frequently--still with his hair standing all over the place, and feeling oddly shaky. Just slightly. He didn't think he could repeat this totally inconsequential story too many more times.

But Thor listened, and didn't jump to _bad dom_ alarm bells--thank god--because he didn't _have_ those alarm bells. But he didn't recite an hour of poetry about a war between hinds and eagles either. All he said was, "Sometimes a person's day is not so good, Clinton. And then they say things they do not mean."

\-----

On Friday, Clint's day is not so good, and then he says things he doesn't mean. Which consisted, mostly, of calling Tony a fuckhead and things in that vein. He wasn't proud of it, or of himself for doing it, but he'd fallen off a fire escape that afternoon--or rather, he'd fallen _with_ a fire escape--and nearly been impaled when a support pole had missed him by inches, and when he'd slipped into Tony's room in the late evening, had suddenly realized, without Tony doing anything at all, that he couldn't deal right now if Tony opened his mouth and said something harsh.

So he'd said something harsh first, and then beat a hasty retreat. 

"I think you're having this little drama all by yourself," Natasha told him, not unsympathetically. A little bit like she thought Clint couldn't help himself. He was sure she had them typecast in her head. She, as the sensible, put-together sub of the team, and Clint as the histrionic one. He glared.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked, because he'd laid into Tony for no reason that anyone but Clint could see, and there would probably be consequences. With Tony that probably meant moping. Maybe with some drinking on the side. A _lot_ of drinking on the side.

Tony punished totally unfairly. There were about a hundred and twenty violent things Clint would rather have done to him than have to watch Tony disconsolately build himself robot friends all night and into the early hours of the morning.

"I'm going to fix it," Clint said, "obviously."


	2. Chapter 2

Fixing it went about as good fucking it up had in the first place. Which was to say, not so well. Tony was mopily piecing electronics together, probably into something sad and guilt tripping that would give hugs the way Clint was kind of embarrassed to do, especially if it was in public.

Clint loitered for a while, fiddling with things that Tony didn't even bother telling him to not touch, then couldn't take it anymore. He sidled up near Tony and pressed against him while pretending to reach for some gadget across the table and finally Tony huffed a laugh and caught him with one arm around his middle, pulling him back a little from the work table, where Tony had parts neatly sorted.

"Don't build robots that are nicer than me," Clint said, even though most of the ones Tony had already built probably were anyway, and had a larger and politer vocabulary to boot. Tony didn't point that out though, even though it would probably have been totally justified. Instead he dropped his pliers to the table and wrapped his other arm around Clint's middle too and pressed his face to Clint's back. His cheek was warm, and his beard slightly pokey through the thin cotton of Clint's shirt, comfortable and familiar. Maybe a bit itchy.

"Jesus, Clint," he said, "I thought you'd got skewered today. There was the. From my angle it looked. _Jesus_."

Clint let himself be pulled back to lean against Tony, and awkwardly tried to find something to do with his hands. He was even more of an asshole than he had thought. He hadn't thought about that near miss from Tony's perspective. Hadn't known Tony had been shaken by Clint's near demise when he'd come home and yelled at him out of the blue and called him an asshole.

"Fuck," Clint said, and twisted around until he could slide to the floor and lean his head against Tony' knee and not think about how much of a shit he'd been today after spending the week worrying about Tony's being a bit impatient a couple of times. Tony let him go and stroked a thumb over his cheekbone until Clint closed his eyes and then he went back to work.

It would have been an okay way for an apology--as it was--to go, except that it seemed Tony was maybe more hurt and pissed than Clint had realized because later he pulled Clint's hair too hard, and dragged him down too fast, and good-bad-scary-safe flopped sickeningly back and forth in way that it hadn't in a while until Tony put it right, what felt like way too long later.

\-----

It was still reasonable, if he thought about it. They'd had a fight. Clint had been a huge asshole. Tony'd thought for several seconds that he'd been killed, or at least injured enough that he was on the way to killed. And Clint's apology had been kind of non-existent and really more like a move to shove everything under the carpet and move on. It wasn't like a little uncharacteristic roughness was actually _strange_ , after all that.

But it _felt_ like it wasn't reasonable. It felt weird and off and un-Tony, but when he tried to get an opinion other than his own, Thor told him a story about a warrior with a boat and stormy waters which Clint figured was probably a metaphor for _couples fight, sometimes_ , but the moral at the end, when he eventually got to it, was about patience and learning seafaring skills.

"You asked him about dom stuff," Natasha pointed out, when Clint tried to get her interpretation of it, "You know he doesn't get that stuff."

Thor really didn't. The same thing that made him great to talk to was also kind of his Achilles heel. So Clint decided to let it be for a while, to see if it would blow over.

\-----

It did. For about four days.

And then there was a morning off where Tony didn't say anything, exactly, but it was obvious that nothing Clint was doing was right. Tony did all the things he was supposed to, petting his hair, and telling Clint he was good, but it was empty. Like he was only doing it as a formality.

Clint didn't feel good or like he _was_ good, and Tony just lay and stared at the ceiling for a long time afterwards and didn't notice that he was supposed to finish putting Clint back together. 

\-----

"Is this still the Tony thing?" Bruce asked, when Clint came back, before Clint could even start talking. 

"Yeah, it's the Tony thing," Clint snapped. He sounded tired, and didn't bother to hide it as he slumped into Bruce's office chair, bogarting it while Bruce was up getting something from the lab mini-fridge.

Bruce looked at him, then his expression changed and he closed the fridge without taking anything out and said, "Are you okay, Clint?"

He really wasn't, but that wasn't the point. _He_ wasn't the point.

"Something's wrong with Tony," he said, and this time Bruce studied him for several minutes in silence, then frowned.

"What do you mean?" he said, and sounded dead serious this time. And even though he'd spent the last day putting _himself_ back together, Clint grinned in relief. He would have liked to tell himself that Bruce was finally pulling his head out of his ass, but it was probably more that _something is wrong with Tony_ sounded a lot less like Clint seeing things than _Tony was sarcastic at me_.

\-----

Now that Clint had Bruce on his side--or at least, had Bruce considering his side with something more than exasperated patience--Tony insisted on acting normally. It made it look a lot more like _Clint_ was the one who was spinning out, and even though Bruce was watching Tony for uncharacteristic behaviour, he was also giving Clint little side-eye looks every so often.

"It's not _me_ ," Clint told him after about the second day of it, "There isn't anything wrong with _me_." He could read the _that's what they all say_ in Bruce's face, but Bruce didn't say anything. "Seriously," Clint added, for emphasis, " _Seriously_ , Bruce."

Bruce said, " _Clint_ ," and okay. Maybe Clint was spinning, just a little bit, and trying just a bit too hard to convince Bruce that his boyfriend was coming unhinged. It was, he guessed, maybe a bit weird, looked at from the outside.

Clint rested his chin on one hand and propped his elbow on the kitchen island, looking out across the counter that divided the common area to where Tony was telling Steve jokes he wouldn't get. Steve had a lot more patience for Tony than he used to, and he seemed to be treating the whole thing as some kind of modern-era informational briefing. Clint could see him filling away the relevant bits of trivia and reference, face just a little bit tense with the suspicion that he was being made fun of.

"Okay," Clint allowed, "He's acting normal _right now_ ," and Bruce made a snorting noise that wasn't really amusement.

"It's a sporadic thing," Bruce said, "I get it," and it wasn't really fair for Bruce to use that _patient_ voice when it was kind of his fault that Clint was so wound up about Bruce believing him.

\-----

Pepper came a few days later to ask if they'd noticed anything off about Tony. "It's nothing big," she said, looking uncertain. Like she thought she was maybe imagining it, and boy. Clint knew _that_ feeling. "He pissed off the shareholders."

That wasn't new, and Bruce gave Clint a raised-eyebrow look in reply to the _I told you so_ look Clint had shot him when Pepper had started talking. 

"But not in the usual way," Pepper said, "It was just. It was _odd_."

Bruce got a very serious look, and Clint said, "Oh fine. Believe _her_."

\-----

The problem with Bruce being convinced was that the first thing he did was bring Steve into it. And Steve didn't take the suggestion of possible _issues_ with one of his team members with a grain of salt or anything even slightly resembling Bruce's scientific skepticism. Probably the difference was that Bruce was used to Clint hanging out in the lab making a nuisance of himself, and Steve was used to Clint being focused and responsible and watching the team's back. While sometimes being a nuisance, but an entirely different brand of one, Clint liked to think, and it was too bad that Bruce didn't have clear memories of that because this whole thing might have gone easier if he had.

"Clint," Steve said, when Tony was out doing whatever it was he and Rhodey got up to in the middle of every third week or so, and wanted to know what Bruce was talking about. _Exactly_ what Bruce was talking about. Clint felt a bit like he was being cornered and then interrogated, and set his jaw, then relaxed when he remembered that he was the one that had brought the whole thing up in the first place, then set it again when Steve's face went all still and stern.

"Oh, hell," Clint said, "Fine. But could you not do that nineteen-forties dom face thing? It's great on a poster, Cap, but you're weirding me out." 

It was something Steve did when he was worried, and he tried to drop it, but seemed to be having problems, so Clint looked at Thor instead while he filled them in. It all seemed way too personal to be saying in front of the team, _to_ the team, and it felt oddly, sickeningly, like the much more public ghost of _tell me how it feels_.

And it wasn't like they were asking for details, but he didn't really want to put into words the fact of Tony leaving him hanging. Saying, "He just left," made his stomach flip back into all of the knots he had spent a day smoothing out of it, and without Clint's meaning to, his voice softened to a whisper.

He hadn't told that bit to Bruce quite that way and now Bruce looked troubled and guilty and Clint felt bad for being the cause of it, because people had fucked Bruce up about as badly as they'd fucked Clint up, and maybe then some. He really didn't need to be feeling bad about not being on top of Clint's Tony problems when Clint had actually not been entirely forthcoming in the first place.

Steve looked at him in silence for a long time--Clint could tell even though he was still looking determinedly at Thor--then said, "We'll keep an eye on him, Clint."

" _I'll_ keep an eye on him," Clint snapped, and realized he sounded ridiculous and possessive, when all he'd meant was that he was the one in a position to closely monitor Tony's subtle but increasing weirdness and didn't really need Captain America to act all protective and patronizing about it.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony came back from his day out with Rhodey--Clint liked to call it that; _day out with Rhodey_ , like it was an event, because it irritated Tony who liked to think of himself and Rhodey as freewheeling buds instead of men shackled by timetables--and continued to act normal. 

And then, with nothing to set him off at all, he went to the lab and built shit for two days, almost without food or sleep.

Clint tried a bunch of things to try to derail the mania, but they all fell through and he ended up watching Tony stab a partly built robot to pieces with his screwdriver, then throw the screwdriver across the room and against the wall, missing a computer by not very much at all.

Clint considered getting Tony coffee, which could sometimes distract Tony for a few minutes, but it seemed like caffeine wasn't the best thing to add to the mix, maybe, when Tony was already bouncing off the walls and any other surface. At least he wasn't drinking. Yet.

On the other hand, Tony's behaviour could have counted as normal if he had been, and Clint wouldn't have been half as worried if he could have chalked up the mania to drunken obsession.

 _Obsession_ obsession was a little bit harder to get a handle on. Especially when Tony wasn't maniacally narrating all the technical aspects of how everything would work when his plans inevitably came together and how _this_ version of whatever it was would be better than all other versions that had come before and so on. 

Clint kind of liked Tony when he was maniacal. Secretly. This silent version of that Tony creeped him out, and as much as he wanted to see if he could fix things in the usual way--which mostly consisted of putting himself in Tony's reach and in Tony's way until he was the center of Tony's attention, and maybe that didn't actually fix anything but it usually made Clint feel a whole lot better--he felt a bit wary about Tony. It was a new feeling. He didn't like it at all.

Tony cursed and swept his arm across the table and sent robotics and electronics crashing to the floor, then for a second looked like he was about to maybe set something on fire. 

And then his expression cleared and he said, "Jesus. _That_ wasn't working," in an impatient, but gently amused tone, like he'd just shaken off regular frustration and had no idea he'd been behaving like a lunatic. 

It was possible, Clint realized, that Tony didn't _know_ that he'd been behaving like a lunatic. Which was a little bit too scary to contemplate, so Clint shoved it down along with the uneasiness, and padded across the lab to help Tony clear up the mess. Then he steered him to bed and Tony let him, that stupid smirky look on his face like hadn't been up for a freakishly long time, even for Tony.

\-----

Actually steering Tony _to_ bed rather than just to the bedroom--Clint's because they kept their own space, because Clint wasn't giving that up now that he had it--proved to be a little trickier than just grabbing Tony and shoving him, but eventually Clint managed and Tony rolled over onto his back and said, "You're kind of fun when you're bossy, Barton."

Clint pulled Tony's shoes off and tossed them sloppily over his shoulder, ignoring Tony's disapproving frown. "Yeah?" he asked, and kicked his own boots off, leaving them in the middle of the floor, before stripping down to his boxers and t-shirt and.

And there was a second where he hesitated, thinking of the feel of his heart thumping too fast, and the scared-lost feeling he'd had when everything he'd done had fallen short of pleasing Tony. When Tony had let him slide into it and then not pulled him back. 

"Clint?" normal-Tony asked, propping himself up on his elbows, his brow furrowed in sleepy worry, and Clint let his breath out and slid in next to him, then wriggled around to get the comforter out from under him so he could toss it over Tony.

"Are you tucking me in," Tony said, "Or are you just covering up the arc reactor?"

"I can't sleep with that thing shining in my face," Clint told him, and tried to sound grumpy so Tony wouldn't make any wisecracks when he tucked himself close and pressed his face into Tony's shoulder. He wasn't, as a rule, much of a cuddler and Tony, as a rule, was _a lot_ of a point-out-and-mention-everything commentator.

But Tony just shifted to make room, then rolled onto his side so he could look down at him. "What is _with_ you?" Tony asked, when Clint ignored it and didn't move. His voice had a tentative little laugh in it that meant he was torn between amusement and concern. 

_What's with -you-_ , Clint could have said, but didn't.

\-----

When Tony woke up, he was still acting like himself, and Clint was so thrilled and relieved that he skipped his usual morning range-time in favor of fucking him silly, then left to get dressed and let Tony go back to sleep until 'real people morning'--which seemed to start either at eleven or two in the afternoon, depending.

"Gonna go shoot stuff," Clint announced, pulling his boots on. Then he kicked them back off in favor of sneakers, since he was only going to be hanging around the tower today. 

"Shush," Tony grumbled, while he was still rummaging around in the bottom of the closet. Tony's shit was inundating his shit at a rapid clip, and Tony had a whole fucking tower to fill with crap. Clint said so. 

Then he added, "And I'd be shushed by now if it wasn't for your mess. I can't find my--"

" _Shush_ ," Tony grumbled louder, in a sort of sleepy shout, and made a grabby-hand gesture when Clint did. Clint sighed and abandoned his search to pad over. Slid back onto the bed and dipped his head till he could fit it against Tony's palm. 

The grabby movement turned into gentle petting and Clint huffed and wrote the range off completely. Almost completely. "Tony," he started.

"No. No 'Tony'. Shut up. Be good." Clint rolled his eyes. Tony's were closed. He wouldn't see it anyway.

"You're okay, right?" Tony asked, finally, slitting his eyes open, "You seem off."

"I'm not _off_ ," Clint said, then winced as Tony's petting turned into a tight grip on his hair. He pulled until Clint was folded up, his face pulled close enough that Tony could search his eyes, freakishly alert and focused, all of a sudden. The change was alarming, and Clint pulled back reflexively, before putting a lid on it and relaxing. It was only a moment's reaction, but way more than enough for Tony to notice. 

"Oh, you're definitely off," Tony told him, but let go. 

"I'm not," Clint repeated, and heard how he sounded. Plaintive and a bit hurt, and he grimaced and put a lid on that, too. "Fuck. That--Okay. Shooting stuff. I'll see you--"

"You'll see me right now," Tony said, and sat up. Clint blinked as the blankets fell away and the light of the damn arc reactor shone directly into his face. 

The range was _really_ a fucking write-off. 

"I have things to do," Clint said, still squinting at the arc reactor. It wasn't that bright, but his eyes were used to the room's darkness. He couldn't really see Tony's expression anymore, in the shadow beyond that bright circle. Beyond the little floating circles he now saw when he blinked. 

"Yeah? And places to see? What the fuck is going on with you, Barton?"

What was going on was that he wanted to stay and hear what Tony had been about to tell him to do and then do it, perfectly and exactly, and _so well_ that Tony would definitely not forget about him this time. And other than that being pathetic, Tony could lose it anytime. Could become a maniac who stabbed his own robots. Robot. Partial robot.

It didn't matter how partial the robot was. Tony loved robots--or loved his own robots, anyway--more than he loved most people. Clint tried not to think about it too much and about what it might mean for the safety of the people around Tony, but he came to the conclusion anyway. He couldn't trust Tony. 

And he wanted to. Was in the habit, already. If Tony's tone changed just a bit more, if he dropped the cranky edge that was Tony half trying to be funny, and slid into his _now, Barton_ voice, Clint was a goner.

He didn't think Tony would hurt him. Not really. Not in any way that mattered. But Tony could do enough that would matter to Tony, and Clint didn't think he could stand the drinking and moping and sad building that would follow if he let that happen.

He leaned to plant a kiss on Tony's forehead, then swung his legs back off the bed, saying, "Nothing's going on. You're sleep deprived. I'll _see you_ at real people morning, whatever time you decide that is today. Go back to bed," and escaped into the hall.


	4. Chapter 4

"Why aren't you wearing shoes?" was the first thing Bruce asked, "This is a lab. There's a _safety code_."

"Don't crab at me, Banner. I've been in riskier situations. I think I'll be alright." Bruce had a point, though, so Clint took a seat on the nearest lab stool and hooked his socked feet on the crossbar. 

Bruce looked at him for a long moment, then repeated, more suspiciously "Why aren't you wearing shoes, Clint?"

"No reason. I may or may not have been beating a hasty retreat." Clint flashed him a grin, and wasn't even sure if he was trying to reassure Bruce, or deal with his own antsiness by spreading it around. If it was the second, it worked, because Bruce's face went all concerned. Maybe Clint was showing too many teeth. Or just enough. It really depended on what his motives were.

"Was this a Tony related retreat?" Bruce asked, carefully enough that Clint rolled his eyes.

"Nothing _happened_. Just. Kind of?" Clint shrugged, and reached to fiddle with a test tube, and Bruce reached to move it away. Clint dropped his hand and drummed his fingers on the table top instead. "He wasn't even acting weird. He thinks something's wrong with _me_."

Bruce gave him a look that clearly meant _-is- something wrong with you?_ and to be fair, Clint was hiding in his lab in socks and acting even fiddlier than usual. 

"I'm not _hiding_ here, or anything, Banner. Tony's sleeping, I missed range time," he gave Bruce a smooth smirk as elaboration, but Bruce wasn't fooled. His suspicious-worried expression stayed exactly the same, "And it's too late to start practice now. I have a Natasha thing in a bit."

"Fine," Bruce said, "We've established that you're okay."

"Finally."

Bruce gave him a crooked look, glasses sliding off his face a bit, then asked, "How's Tony?"

That was a damn good question. Clint took a minute to consider it. To untangle his own reactions and separate them from objective observation. He still came up with, "I don't know," and frowned at his hands, still now on the table top. "He was up three days straight. He didn't sleep that much before that, but it's _Tony_." That wasn't much. It was normal for Tony, when he was on a science craze, which wasn't all that infrequent.

"I saw the robot," Bruce offered, and Clint shrugged a shoulder, because he still wasn't sure what to think about that. Extrapolating risk from Tony's uncharacteristic fit of destruction felt dangerous, in a way that it didn't when he was analyzing a mark. 

"He didn't remember it," Clint said. "It was right there in front of him, and he was suddenly all Tony again. And he didn't even." He gestured, as if the mess of parts was there on Bruce's table in front of him. Tony hadn't even _noticed_ what he'd done.

Bruce hmm-ed. Bruce's hmm-s were very reassuring, Clint decided. Tony might be losing his mind, but Clint still had the doc on his side, and the doc had--well, not a medical degree, maybe, but a bunch of medical _stuff_ on his side. "D'you think he'd _know_ if he--"

Bruce cut him off, with an awkward little wave of his own, flicking his fingers in front of Clint's face in a _settle down_ gesture. "It's probably taking him longer than it looks to snap out of it. He'll probably be really surprised when he sees the mess later."

Tony wouldn't be. They'd cleaned it up. He wasn't sure if he should tell Tony or not tell Tony that he might be going nuts every so often. On the one hand, he wasn't sure what the hell was going on yet, and didn't want to scare the shit out of Tony when the only answer he could give was _I don't know_. On the other hand, Tony had a right to the information.

Clint sighed and stole Bruce's coffee again. He didn't mention that Bruce having food and drink in the lab wasn't really in line with his fussiness about having footwear.

\-----

"If he asks you, you tell him," was Natasha's solution. She had her nose in a cook book, though, so Clint wasn't entirely sure how closely she'd even been paying attention, "Otherwise, you're not actually withholding information." 

Natasha's social tactics were logical, but Clint didn't think they actually solved his ethical dilemma. "You know that 'you didn't tell me--you didn't ask' thing doesn't actually work, right? I know it seems like it should, but it usually just makes people _more_ pissed."

"It's always worked for me," Natasha shrugged, and Clint could sort of see how it might.

"Never mind," he said, perched on the counter of her kitchen--as opposed to _the_ kitchen, which was upstairs, in the common area, "but remind me to ask you for advice the next time I need to loophole my way out of something." Natasha smiled at him, smooth and friendly, and lies lies lies. Clint recognized the danger in the expression and grinned back. Thumped his heel into her cabinet a couple of times. "So what are we doing? What's with the _Fifty meals in fifteen minutes_?Are you turning domestic on me?"

Natasha huffed and turned to the cover of the book, which Clint hadn't actually gotten a look at yet, "Fifteen minutes? If you think my culinary goals are a cheeto and peanut butter sandwich--" she let it trail off and Clint wrinkled his nose at her.

"Fine. What are we rustling up? I hope we don't need to go out for ingredients, because I don't have my left shoe." He didn't have his right shoe, either, still, and he didn't want to go back to his room and risk waking Tony. 

Natasha surveyed him coolly, then held up the book to show him the picture. Noodles. Chicken. They could manage that. "Everything I don't have, we can steal from upstairs," she said.

"Step one," Clint said, "You need an apron."

\-----

It turned out that Natasha didn't want him for his help, or his opinions, but to carry dishes upstairs for her when she was done, so Clint went to get Thor so he could pawn the job off on him, and maybe snag Natasha an apron anyway, while he was at it. 

Tony was up when he got to the communal kitchen, blearily watching the coffee drip from the percolator into the pot and muttering at it to hurry. 

"Is that an AI too, now?" Clint asked, and came up to lean against him, "You think it's listening?" Then, "This is kind of a late morning, even for you. Nat's making dinner." An early dinner, but still. 

The machine gurgled and Clint reached over and around Tony to get at the mugs, then handed one over, pressing it into Tony's hand. Tony looked amused. "You know I was closer, right Barton?" he asked, but he took the mug and frowned at the pot, as if assessing whether the volume of coffee was enough yet to be worth pouring.

"I know." Clint made a bit of distance so he could give Tony a once-over. He looked better. Less haggard, more color in his face, and he was still acting normal. There was no way to know how much of that was the sleep, and how much--if any--was Tony getting better. Clint frowned a little as Tony took noisy sips, then sighed in satisfaction.

"What?" Tony asked over the rim of his cup, noticing the scrutiny. Clint leaned away, resting his elbows against the counter.

"Nothing." It wasn't a good answer, but _you don't look crazy today_ , was probably a worse one. 

And then Tony looked down and saw Clint had been walking around in his socks all day. Clint said, "Um."

It wasn't that barefooting it around the tower was that unusual, but Clint was in and out of the lab and range, most of the time, which made it impractical, so mostly he didn't. Tony sipped his coffee, silently now, his expression too-calm. "Right. Something's coming back to me. I seem to remember telling you to stay put--"

"Not in so many words," Clint argued.

Tony had a little furrow between his brows, and he tilted his head a little as he considered Clint. Clint thought of it as his how-does-it-work face. It was how Tony looked when he was stringing code or mechanics together, or taking them apart, and it wasn't the most comfortable thing to be the target of it. Clint tried not to fidget, and mostly succeeded, but he felt his gaze sliding downwards anyway. 

And then Tony's hand settled on his face. A brief, light touch before it was gone again. "What's going on?" he demanded, and Clint peered up at him and tried for a reassuring grin while he tried to figure out if Natasha would count as _asking_ or not. 

"Tony--"

Tony kept looking at him, steady and still calm, but just like that, Clint could feel the normal bleeding away. 

"It's alright, Tony," he said, and took the coffee cup away from him. "Nat cooked. Everyone's on edge. I'm pretty sure she's going to try to make me be her taste tester."

Tony still didn't say anything, and Clint tried not to be so aware that _Tony_ would have laughed, or at least made a return comment.

\-----

Still, Tony held it together until much later, when the last of Natasha's chicken was being turned into sandwiches and Thor was rummaging through the fridge for other leftovers to stack on top of today's leftovers, because he and Steve were _monsters_.

"Jesus," Bruce said, as Thor's giant sandwich became two, then three, then were rapidly decimated. It was impressive, Clint agreed. Also, a little bit scary in a way. He opened his mouth to make a comment, then didn't. Tony looked--off, somehow. Clint couldn't really put his finger on what it was he saw in Tony's face when he was about to go off, but it was unmistakeably there. For a second he didn't know whether to slide closer to Bruce, or closer to Thor, or go to Tony. 

And then he shook it off and straightened, but Tony had noticed. _Of course_ Tony had noticed.

"Alright. What happened?" Tony demanded of the kitchen in general, "I'm gone for ten minutes and now Clint is acting _freaky_ ," then scowled when he was met by silence. Tony seemed to think that whatever the problem was, it was something that had happened with the team while he'd been out with Rhodey, so it probably came off like they were guilty as hell, and Clint was glad _now_ that Bruce had given everyone the heads-up about Tony's recent weirdness, because casting accusations at the team--even unclear accusations--wasn't likely to go down well. 

Tony was generally a pretty laid back dom. Didn't make a lot of public show of his claim, or require Clint to make shows of submission. Things that didn't involve Clint's cooperation--like dramatic complaints--were a lot more up Tony's alley. Clint recognized the possessive tone in it, and felt a strange rush of quiet and confusion. Wasn't sure if he should settle where he was, or--again--go to Tony. Wasn't sure what he wanted, what would calm him down.

He covered it by rolling his eyes and telling Tony, "Nothing happened. I'm not _being_ freaky." It didn't sound snippy, like he'd meant it to. It sounded small and pleading. Almost the way he sounded when he was trying to get Tony to say _that's good, Clint._

It was stupid. He could feel Steve's eyes snap to him at the too-easy way he was slipping downward, and tried to shake it off. Or cover it up, at least.

Tony flicked his fingers at him and said "Hush," so Clint did, but that just made the silence of the others more obvious and Tony's eyes narrowed dangerously.

Which made everything even worse.

Tony had no idea how much he was spooking the rest of them out. Tony had no idea how creepy he was coming across. After his multi-day robotics binge, his clueless indignation was enough to unnerve even Steve, who had that stern face again, his mouth a straight line with the corners turned down to make it just the slightest bit frowny.

"Tony," Steve started, but Clint glared at him and he stopped. 

" _What?_ " Tony demanded, his voice dripping ice, locking onto Steve. Clint willed Steve to not say anything stupid.

"Tony--"

"I said _hush_ , Clint."

It was snapped, Tony's tone hard and pissed off. Not a tone he'd ever used to reprimand Clint, when he did at all--which was rare--and definitely never in public. Definitely never in front of the team. Clint would snap back, but he was already half flooded by the quiet feeling, and when he opened his mouth what came out was, "Yes, Tony."

And then he bit it off, but the silence in the kitchen had turned to something else. There was a hand on his back, and for a second he thought it was Natasha, but Natasha was hustling Tony out of the kitchen, followed by Bruce. 

"Easy, Clint," Steve said and Clint figured out that the hand was way too big to be Natasha. And it wasn't that Steve wasn't a nice guy, but his dated be-nice-to-subs reflex thing was a bit much to handle just at the moment. It was bad enough that the weight of his hand was actually calming.

"If you ask Thor what he thinks Bruce is," Clint said, to lighten the mood and to keep Steve from saying anything he didn't want to hear, "he'll tell you a story about a feast of oxen."

He felt more than saw Steve shift to look at him. The hand on his back slid as Steve leaned, probably to get a look at Clint's face. To see if he was cracking. "Of oxen feasting, or of oxen served at a feast?" Steve asked, which was a valid question. Considering what Thor's stories were like, it could really go either way.

"I'm not sure. Maybe that's the point." Thor hadn't really clarified it. The moral at the end had been something that sounded suspiciously like _mind your own business_. Clint had no idea how Thor had gotten there from _hoofed revelry_ , and he was suddenly not in the kitchen anymore to ask.


	5. Chapter 5

Tony woke up on the couch, which was weird as hell because the last thing he remembered was watching Thor inhale a sandwich. Or. Scratch that. The last thing he remembered was Clint looking at him from across the kitchen with that weird watchful look he had a lot, recently, and kind of going still next to Bruce.

And then. And then he was waking up on the couch. There were flashes in between. Something about Clint, Natasha shoving him, something... _something_. And _then_ he was waking up on the couch. 

It wasn't an entirely new experience, but he didn't thinks Natasha's recent foray into the culinary arts had been exactly that kind of party. The parts of it he remembered seemed a lot more like the kind of party that ended up in tea-all-around instead of disoriented awakenings with memory gaps. 

He hadn't been to a memory gap party in a while, actually. He should remedy that soon. Maybe he could even get Clint to relax enough to behave and let Tony show him off instead of being quietly threatening and all assassin control. 

Speaking of which.

"Clint?" Tony sat up, and that felt like a hangover morning, too. His head felt heavy and there was an unsteady feeling threatening, like he might be dizzy in a bit, but wasn't yet. 

"Tony." Clint was there. Sitting cross-legged in in one of the leather armchairs. He looked like he'd been there a while, and he had that cautious, watchful look he'd started wearing recently. Tony didn't like it at all. 

"Are you alright?" he asked, softly, as much for the benefit of his own throbbing head as because he thought Clint might be having a sub moment. 

He was having those a lot lately, too. Going quiet too easy, or resisting with a stubbornness Tony hadn't seen since the beginning. "So Tasha's party went better than expected, huh?" he asked, and Clint didn't grin. Didn't even make the attempt. 

"It was just dinner," he said, and got to his feet to pad over and flop onto the couch next to Tony. He propped his feet on the coffee table, toes just hooked over the edge of it, and that brought back something else. 

"This morning," Tony said, "Did I do something?"

Clint's eyes flashed, but not in anger. More like he was searching for an exit, and that was definitely weird. "No," he said, and now he did grin. It was for Tony's benefit. Clint's eyes stayed dark and serious and if Tony had never particularly taken his dom duties seriously--or, he did, really, but Clint had always seemed alright left mostly to his own devices, without much direction or correction needed. Tony wasn't sure if this quiet, grim Clint was the result of of something he'd done. Maybe something he hadn't done. 

"I'm fine," Clint said, but his hand hooked carefully in Tony's shirt, even though he didn't turn to look. Tony frowned, and patted the top of his head, flat palmed, more a series of soft bops, and now Clint did look up. Gave a half grin and a soft snort of laughter. 

"Tony--" he said.

"Nope."

" _Tony_ ," Clint said again, this time with irritation in his voice. Tony let his hand still and shoved at Clint with his feet.

"Move. Move. My head is about to fall right off." 

Clint shifted, and Tony laid back down with a groan. "Did I take something last night? Blow to the head, maybe? I remember Tasha's cooking needed work, and--And something about. Was Natasha shoving me?"

"Maybe a bit," Clint allowed, and pulled his feet onto the couch alongside Tony's legs. "You alright?"

"Did she hit me in the head? Maybe I mentioned her over cooked chicken?"

"No. Well, maybe. I didn't see after she shoved you out of the kitchen." Huh. Further clues. 

"How did I get here?" he asked, meaning the couch, "I remember Thor swallowing a loaf of rye whole, I think. And then--"

Clint huffed. Slouched. Sliding down against the armrest made his shirt ruck up, exposing skin. Clint didn't seem to notice. "Go back to sleep, Tony." And then, after what was obviously hesitation, "Maybe your lab binge is screwing with your head." Lack of sleep. Memory gaps. It made some sense. The way Clint clearly had to force the suggestion out didn't.

"Okay. Good idea. Naps for everyone," Tony said, and waved a hand in drowsy circles.


	6. Chapter 6

"And now he's asleep _again_ ," Clint said, leaning over Bruce's work table. Bruce wasn't even working. Clint had no idea why he was down here, fronting. "He slept fourteen hours before dinner."

"Sure. And he was awake for three, four days, maybe, before _that_ ," Bruce said, with infuriating _reason_. And alright. That made sense. But it didn't explain anything else that had been going on, and Clint could tell Bruce knew it. _Of course_ Bruce knew it. 

"Stop trying to make me feel better." Clint didn't need to feel better. He needed Tony to stop acting strange and to stop thinking _Clint_ was acting strange. He needed _Tony_ to feel better. 

And maybe Tony didn't exactly look like he felt _bad_ , but still. "Maybe he's having a stroke," Clint suggested. Bruce gave him a look. "Or a series of seizures. Microseizures. Or something."

"Oh Jesus. Is Tony making you watch science TV now?" Bruce didn't give him the _why, by God, were you given the ability of speech_ look again though, so Clint figured there was maybe the possibility that his guesses were getting closer to plausible. He'd thought it would be comforting, or at least feel like he was making some kind of headway, if he could put names to things, but it really wasn't. _Seizure_ didn't sound like something that was really fixable. Not _go ahead, fly a jet propelled weaponized suit_ levels of fixable, anyway. There had been a girl in the circus who'd had seizures. They'd been _manageable_.

"Nevermind," Clint backtracked, "it's not seizures," and Bruce gave him an amused look.

"I'm pretty sure wishful thinking isn't how diagnosis works," he said, and he was probably right but Clint really wanted to start with something serious enough that it would explain everything and leave Tony comfortably not accountable for any of it, but that was also entirely curable.

"No reason to start out being a pessimist," he told Bruce. There might be plenty of reason for pessimism later. Experience had taught him that things usually went that way, eventually, but he wasn't that eager to start out there, looking for things to go wrong. 

Not when it came to Tony. 

"Well, no reason to jump to stroke and seizure from oversleeping and erratic behavior, anyway," Bruce agreed, "He could also be having a mental break of some kind."

"Stop trying to make me feel better," Clint said, sarcastically this time, and Bruce patted his arm. Clint wasn't appeased. He stole Bruce's coffee again and picked up his pen to doodle little squiggles in the margins of Bruce's notebook, staying well clear of the equations and formulas scribbled across the pages. 

Bruce pulled it away, "You're a force of minor destruction," he said, closing the book and shoving it into a drawer. 

" _Minor_ destruction?" He was still holding the pen, hovering it over nothing, coffee cup in the other hand. 

He took a sip and Bruce said, " _Extensive_ minor destruction."

Clint tossed the pen down and Bruce rolled his eyes and picked it up to cap it and toss it into the drawer after the notebook. "Stop freaking out, Clint," he said, "I have a system going here and it can't handle this. You."

Bruce's system had been handling this and him fine. Clint scowled and wrapped his now-free hand around the coffee mug, cradling it in both hands to feel the warmth against his fingers. "I'm not 'freaking out', _Bruce_ ," he said, putting annoyed emphasis on Bruce's name. "I--"

He was trying to pick a fight with Bruce of all people, which was just stupid. And on more than one level. Picking fights with Bruce would either get him nowhere or get him way more than he was bargaining for, way faster than was good for anyone. 

"Right," Clint said, and took a last sip of coffee before pushing the mug back across the table to Bruce and getting to his feet. "Tell me if you figure anything out. Tell me if you have _guesses_."

"I will. Take care of Tony, okay?" 

Clint grinned, not because there was anything in the situation to grin about, but because Bruce deserved a little friendliness after the crap Clint had been giving him. 

"Always do," Clint said.

\-----

Or really, he always did when he knew what the hell it was he was supposed to be doing. Tony slept and slept, way too long. Way too deeply, and even though Clint had meant to be awake when Tony came to, he fell asleep in the armchair and woke with Tony gone from the couch and a crick in his neck and even though he'd wanted Tony to wake up his first reaction was panic. 

"Hey." 

Clint stopped. Froze long enough to assess the situation, then saw it was Steve, leaning over the other chair, looking well-rested and like he hadn't stayed up way too long then slept in an awkwardly upright position. Clint hated him a little.

"Steve Where--?" 

"Kitchen. He's--" Steve had little concerned furrow between his brows, and it wasn't doing much to settle Clint down, even though Steve had his _be calm_ expression on the rest of his face. 

It was a look that worked on the public, but not so much on Clint. For Clint it was more of an alarm bell. He scrambled to his feet and darted past Steve, then came to a stop on the dining room side of the dividing counter, looking Tony up and down. He looked fine, if somewhat drowsy. 

Steve's worried look was somewhat annoying, now that Clint saw it had been misleading.

"Thanks for letting me spend the night on the couch, _Barton_ ," Tony groused, accusingly. "You could have woken me up, you know."

Clint really couldn't have. Not only because he'd wanted Tony to sleep, but also because Tony had refused to rouse at _anything_. "Are you okay?" Clint demanded, probably a lot snappier than would make sense to Tony.

"No. No, I'm not okay. Me and my back _hate_ you," Tony said, dramatically, but Clint could see in his face that he was kidding. "But then," Tony continued, with that suspicious look that was getting way too familiar, " _you_ slept in the chair."

Clint shrugged, leaning across the counter. "Yeah. Fell asleep," he said, lightly, like it hadn't been preceded by at least a couple of hours of watching Tony sleep like the dead. 

Tony turned in his chair, pushing it back from the table, then scratched thoughtfully at his beard. Clint could lie and misdirect like a champion, but Tony wasn't exactly an amateur bullshitter himself. It was like he could smell it in the water. "Alright, Freakmachine," he said, with that patient dom condescension that drove Clint nuts, most of the time, but otherwise made his world narrow down to Tony, "it that's how it's gonna be. Get over here."

Clint glanced around, and Tony tut-ed. Indicated the floor in front of him with a little nod and then gave Clint an expectant, raised eyebrows look. 

"Oh, _fine_ ," Clint said, and came around the counter to step into the space between Tony's knees. Tony waited a while, then propped an elbow on the table and leaned sideways to rest his head on his hand and give Clint a measuring, thoughtful look.

"Did I get hit with some kind of time machine ray? Or fall through some an inter-dimensional portal?" he asked, but brought his free hand to rest on Clint's hip. Then, more seriously, "Why are you back to this, Clint?"

Clint very carefully _didn't_ make a face. He wasn't _back_ to anything. This caution with Tony was entirely different to the caution he'd had before, at the beginning, when he'd been--skittish. He had to admit that was the word for it. He hadn't _really_ thought Tony would mess with him once he was down, but everything between them up until that point had been jokey and competitive and easy. 

Up until that point, Tony hadn't really asked him to give anything up. The idea had taken some getting used to. 

This, now, wasn't Clint holding back. Or, okay. Yes. But it wasn't _the same_.

Tony's hand didn't move from his hip, but his thumb dipped under the hem of Clint's shirt to stroke against his skin as Tony waited him out. Clint hadn't thought of Tony as particularly patient before, but anyone who spent hours meticulously fitting and welding and fixing tiny parts had to be, really.

Clint took a breath, and then another, and then, before he could totally blow the boundaries of _taking way too long_ , he went to his knees. Tony's hand slid along his side as he went, then lifted and resettled against his face. "There you go. Good, Clint."

"You're not too bad, either," Clint said, to return the compliment, and Tony snorted in that amused disapproval that was the sound Tony made when he was secretly pleased with Clint's misbehavior. It made quiet and safe bubble up inside him and Clint tamped it down before it could swallow him.

"Now," Tony said, still leaning his head against one hand, "You're going to tell me what the hell is going on with you."

It was low, getting him on his knees for it. And even Natasha's loop-holing couldn't make that not a direct question. An _order_. "Nothing's going on with me," Clint tried splitting hairs, but it felt rotten. Tony didn't buy it, either. He raised his eyebrow in a look he'd either learned or stolen from Bruce. All cool doubt. Clint let his breath out and set his jaw. 

He'd had worse interrogations than Tony's disapproving looks.

"Because Steve says I tried to put you down in front of the team."

Clint jerked, glancing up and then away and even that brief reaction had given it away. 

"Clint?" Tony asked, voice no-nonsense now. A stern tone that he didn't resort to often. Clint settled, shifting his weight back to make a little distance.

"It's not Steve's business," he said, and didn't mean for it to come out angry and snapped.

Tony was usually the first to rebuff Steve's well-meaning interference, but now he just _hmm_ -ed and patted Clint's hair and sat there looking down at him. "Are you looking for a firmer hand, Barton?" he asked, eventually, "Because I've been asking you for _days_ if something's going on."

Fuck Steve. He hated Steve. Steve and his nosy look-out-for-subs blast from the past bullshit. He'd go give Steve a piece of his mind if he wasn't as good as trapped just then. If he wasn't being--well, _approaching_ being good. Mostly. Sort of. Maybe.

"Clint," Tony said, and straightened, using both hands now to hold him, one on either side of his face. He tilted Clint's head back, forcing eye contact, "while I was--whatever the fuck it was. Did I hurt you?"

_Only a little_ , Clint didn't say. 

"No." He followed it with a grin for good measure, but Tony let him go and leaned back and away. Sighed. 

"Jesus, Clint," he said, "I'm so sorry."


	7. Chapter 7

"It's just as well," Bruce said, "There's a certain point where withholding someone's medical information from them becomes morally iffy."

Clint wanted to glare, but he had to admit that Bruce was probably right. "Fucking Steve," he said anyway, and absently threw Bruce's pen across the lab without really aiming at anything. It hit a far table then rolled and came to a stop against the slightly raised edge. 

Bruce followed it's flight with his eyes, then sighed and looked back at Clint. "Steve takes some things really seriously," he said, "you know that." Clint did know that. He also knew Bruce wasn't talking about Tony's possible illness or mental break. At least, he was pretty sure that medical ethics wasn't what had been on Steve's mind.

"Steve can go beat his chest someplace else. I can look after myself." 

Bruce sighed again, and Clint waved a hand vaguely to indicate that he didn't mean it. Steve wasn't that kind of overbearing dom. Steve was an entirely different kind of overbearing dom, and it had a lot more to do with a combination of Steve's ingrained old-fashionedness and his fear of loss than it did with thinking Clint was incompetent. 

Still.

Having information about what had been going on was sending Tony into a frenzy of trying to find _more_ information. And he was making about as much headway with that as Clint and Bruce had been. 

Not that he was talking to Clint or working with Clint or asking Clint questions anymore. It wasn't exactly like Tony had shut him out, but he'd clearly been stamped a _poor source of information_. He could see it every time Tony started to ask him a question, then didn't and resorted to stroking Clint's head or back instead.

Cautious, guilty Tony was a lot more grating than the woeful, sulking Tony he was used to dealing with when they had problems.

He couldn't mention the Tony thing to Bruce though, because Bruce would just tell him about how accidentally hurting people could feel worse than doing it on purpose, than knowing what one was doing and why. And there was no way to argue against Bruce on that particular topic without coming across like a jackass, so Clint just didn't bring it up.

Even if it wasn't really the same. It wasn't like Tony had thrown a car at him. 

\-----

It was the sort of situation that he would normally run past Natasha, but Natasha hadn't been giving the advice he wanted to hear, and in fact, Natasha's advice--as he'd expected--was kind of real-world socially inept, and had gotten him in probably deeper water than maybe he'd be in otherwise. And it hadn't thrilled Tony to boot to be told, _no everything's fine, you aren't unhinged, why do you ask_. 

Clint's second option was Thor, and this time he didn't have to find Thor, or ask Thor any questions, because this time Thor came and found him while he was lying across the couch contemplating the ceiling and proceeded to tell him a story about a pair of brothers getting lost that might have been vaguely autobiographical, but was mostly unhelpful. At the end of it he gently patted Clint's back in the way that he did when he was making an effort to be more Midgardian. 

It was a bit awkward. Thor never quite got the timing and context for that sort of thing right--for example, he'd completely missed that patting Clint like that was pretty inappropriate for someone who wasn't Tony and hadn't asked Tony's permission--but Clint appreciated the sentiment.

"What was the point?" Clint asked, after he'd let Thor pat him awhile. More for Thor's sake than his own, because Thor clearly wanted to feel like he was helping. 

"The point?" Thor's arm settled across Clint's shoulders, and his face looked serious and troubled. Thor seemed to have interpreted Clint's sub thing as Clint needing a big-brother hug now and then. Which was, in a way, not that far from the truth. 

In _a way_. 

"Of the story. Why don't you just come out with it? Just cut to the chase _one time_."

Thor _humph_ -ed. A sound that was somewhere between offended and thoughtful. "Why are Midgardians are so impatient?" he complained, "Once, I had a query for my father and for three days he spoke--"

" _Three days?_ " He was sure Thor was fucking with them, sometimes. But then, he was also a thousand year old prince on permanent sleep-over at Tony's house of gratuitous expenditure. Who knew what he might do or how long he might listen to someone talk about how many kinds of giants there were and their arguments and what they did on their downtime.

Thor didn't look thrilled at being interrupted, and Clint had probably just proven his opinion on the lacking attention span of earth-people, but Thor let it go a moment later and sighed. He pulled his arm back, but instead of retreating to his own personal space, he laid a big hand over Clint's head, which was just...weird. And still socially inappropriate. _More_ socially inappropriate. Clint snorted a laugh, but didn't duck out from under it, even though there was the risk of Natasha walking in and having _so many_ fun comments.

"Clint," Thor said, and his voice was low and serious and didn't go at all with the totally ridiculous head patting. Clint thought of a whole lot of dog jokes he could make, but he didn't think Thor would get most of them.

"Is this the moral of the story?" he asked, because _finally_.

"Clint, I love my brother very much, and I believe he feels the same for me," Thor paused and Clint made a face. "But Loki--"

"Ugh." It was mean, but Clint couldn't help it. He twitched and Thor's patting stopped, but only so he could use his grip to keep Clint in place and that was _completely unacceptable_. "Thor. _No_."

"Sometimes a sickness of the heart is the hardest to cure, Clint Barton."

It was somehow worse than Bruce's _mental break_ comment. Clint settled into place all of a sudden, but it had nothing to do with the way Thor's fingers were digging into his scalp. This time when he pulled away, Thor let him.

"Tony'll be fine."

Thor didn't say anything. He just nodded, but in a way that wasn't very convincing. Humoring him. Clint scowled. Tony wasn't a lunatic like Loki and he wasn't turning into one, either. The suggestion was really offensive, but Clint didn't think he could say so without phrasing it in a way that would hurt Thor's feelings.

"I hope for that as well," Thor said quietly, and didn't take his hand back. Clint thought for a second that maybe he was supposed to wish for Loki's well being in return, but he couldn't quite bring himself to, even now.

"Yeah," he said instead, and ducked his head a bit to make Thor's hand slide off.

\-----

Tony wasn't fine. 

Clint woke up to him mumbling and--not thrashing exactly, but twisting around in the blankets. It only took Clint a few seconds to remember that, unlike Nat or Steve, Tony was pretty safe to wake from a nightmare, so he reached over and shook him, maybe not as gently as he could have. "Tony!"

Tony started and swung, but it was uncoordinated and mostly just him still reacting to whatever he'd been dreaming. "You okay?" Clint asked, and Tony blinked, recognizing his voice. The arc reactor shone eerily, reflecting off Tony's damp face in a way that made him look strange and sickly. It was clear as fuck that he _wasn't_ okay, and up until then Tony had mostly just been acting strangely. There hadn't been any physical sign of illness.

Thor and his sickness of the heart could eat their--their hearts out. Could fucking _suck it_.

"Yeah," Tony said, "I'm fine," but kept looking at him with the same kind of blank expression. Maybe still half asleep, maybe still reacting to the dream. Maybe a bit out of it. Clint untangled the blankets and engaged in the unsexiest feeling up ever. Tony's skin was clammy but not feverish, and his shirt damp with sweat. Clint worked his hands under it and started tugging it up.

"Did you wake me up for _this_ , One Track Mind?" Tony asked finally, when Clint had gotten his shirt up as far it would go without Tony's cooperation.

"Oh, I woke _you_ up, huh?" Clint said, and tried to get him up so he could get rid of the shirt. Tony didn't budge. Just looked up at him with dark eyes, arc-reactor blue reflecting off them. Clint couldn't tell if he was being a pain on purpose or not. "Come on. You're all gross."

"Well _there's_ a come-on no man can resist."

Clint gave his shirt a last frustrated tug and gave up, dropping his head to Tony's stomach and lying there even though Tony's skin was unpleasantly cool and damp against his cheek. After a minute Tony sat up, dislodging him, and squirmed the rest of the way out of his shirt. Tossed it to the floor. 

" _That_ is why I couldn't find my shoes," Clint complained, but tightened his grip when Tony made a move like he was going to get up, even though it was really unlikely that he was going after the shirt. Clint shifted until he could rest enough weight on Tony to more or less pin him--at least, unless Tony was willing to put up a struggle about it--then said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you when you asked. About what was going on."

There were certain inequalities in their relationship and one of them was that Clint rarely apologized. Tony wouldn't wring it out of him and Clint wouldn't _say it_. Not that he ignored his fuck-ups--in fact, he tried to un-fuck them as best as he could, most of the time--but he didn't say the words. Couldn't, sometimes. Not when it was serious. Not when he'd actually screwed up.

Tony _hmph_ -ed, not acknowledging anything out of the ordinary. "Well you should be," he said, sliding back under the blankets. One of his hands came to rest on the back of Clint's neck. "And you're not getting off the hook that easy."

Clint huffed. Turned that over in his mind, trying to figure out exactly what that was a promise of, then said, "Alright."


	8. Chapter 8

"So for the record," Clint said, "I think Tony's sick, you think he's having a breakdown, and Thor thinks he might be turning into a nutbag. I just want to make sure so you can't take your bets back later."

Bruce put his pen down and looked up, "Clint," he said, "I was just trying to cover all the possibilities. I _am_ taking this seriously." Then, after a moment of what might have been hesitation, "I also think you might be getting a little high strung."

Oh. 

"Is that _code_ for something, doc?" Clint asked, even though he was pretty sure that it was. 

"No," Bruce said, and he was lying through his teeth. Clint narrowed his eyes at him and would have picked something off the desk to fiddle with or throw but it looked like Bruce had removed or secured all the small items that usually attracted his fingers. 

Clint snorted. Bruce was transparent as fuck. Bruce's concerned pretending-not-to-peer-over-his-glasses looks were transparent as fuck. "I don't need taking care of," he said. There'd been _years_ when he hadn't had a dom, or when he'd had pretty shitty doms. He didn't need a dom to keep him on the level. That was just--He hadn't gotten this far being one of those subs. He hadn't gotten this far by _needing_ like that.

Bruce sighed. "Clint,' he said, and let it hang. 

"He had some kind of fever, and then it was gone," Clint said, cutting off whatever Bruce had been about to say. "But he seemed fine otherwise." 

Bruce sighed and let him change the subject. "Okay," he said, "I'll see if I can talk him into a trip to medical."

\-----

Talking Tony into anything was pretty difficult, especially if Tony thought there might be something wrong. Tony's standard response to things being wrong--with him, anyway--were to keep it to himself and try to ignore it while also trying to solve the problem on his own, while _also_ pretending that everything was fine.

And it wasn't like Clint could disapprove of that without coming off like a hypocrite, but it didn't really work when everyone else already _knew_ something was wrong. And, actually, knew more about it than Tony. 

"Bruce thinks you should go to medical," Clint said again, suddenly having more sympathy than he'd ever meant to have for any number of his past handlers as he waylaid Tony before he could make it to the lab. If he made it behind his desk, he was as good as lost, and if Clint bugged him too much there, he'd just get shut out, because Tony joy-built, and boredom-built, and hyperactive-built, but the worst was when he stress-built or mope-built and it looked like he was determined to engage in both of those last two.

"Bruce thinks," Tony said, "Or you think that Bruce should think and got him to agree with you?"

"What?" Clint took a second to sort that out then said, "Just because Bruce agrees with me doesn't mean he doesn't _actually_ agree with me, Tony."

"What did you do? Throw pipettes at all of his beakers until he caved?" Tony groused, clearly just for the hell of it. He looked gently amused and Clint took the opportunity to get in his space and then turn Tony around so he was pointing away from his lab. Then sort of muscled him back up the hall.

"You should watch yourself, Barton," Tony said, letting himself be steered, "I might start taking exception to this bossy streak you've got going. I might start thinking you could use some manners."

Clint wasn't sure if it was just Tony talking shit, or if it was a part of Tony _losing_ his shit, but he'd now been threatened with discipline more times in the last twenty four hours than he'd racked up in the entire time before that. "Shut the hell up, Tony," he said, "Or put your money where your mouth is."

It wasn't meant to be a challenge. It was just that Clint couldn't really help himself when he felt pushed. 

Tony gave him a look. Clint didn't apologize. He did maybe tilt his head a little bit, just to defuse the confrontation--if that's what it was--and after a second Tony's stern look softened. Clint tried not to grin, but he could play Tony like a fucking _tuba_. Harpsichord. Something. Something musical, but _cool_.

"Fine," Tony said, dramatically throwing his arms up in the most insincere gesture of surrender Clint had ever seen, "Fine. No lab. I'll just sit on the couch and stare at the wall and be bored. What do you care if the progress of the human race grinds to a halt, right?"

\-----

"We've stopped evolving as a species because Tony's not refurbishing toasters," Clint reported, when Steve came into the living room and looked like he was about to ask what was going on. His face changed, so that now he looked like he didn't really want to know what they were up to, or maybe like he didn't want to be presented with team shit he would have to deal with.

"I've got it under control, Cap," Clint assured him with a grin and a thumbs up and Steve reluctantly left them to wander into the kitchen. Came back later with a _Stark Industries_ tumbler in his hand. 

"I'm heading down to the gym," he said, letting it hang. Clint wasn't sure if it was an invitation or a hint or a subtle _just in case you need me_. 

"Sure," he said, and Steve lingered, looking over them, at how Clint was watching Tony tap away a Starkpad. 

"I didn't say _stop evolving_ ," Tony said, looking up, misreading the silence, "I said our progress was falling behind. And it's Clint's fault."

"Soon we'll return to the water," Clint said, even though it was more fun to drop science TV on Bruce than on Steve, who just looked puzzled and then got that look that meant he thought they were making fun of his lack of twenty-first century pop-culture knowledge. Clint grinned and tried to make it look un-dickish and Cap lingered a second or two longer, then said, "Alright, then," and went.

\-----

Tony tapped and tapped, and then tapped faster. The familiar _click click click_ of the Starkpad's keyboard sound effects had been lulling Clint--not into sleep, but into daydreaming as he side-walk watched out the window, paperwork ignored on his bent knee, pen tapping to every third click or so. 

The acceleration of the taps threw him off. Stark ain't got no rhythm, he thought and started to say, but when he looked up Tony's face had that intent, frustrated look he sometimes got when time was short and technology was eluding him. 

Like when their lives depended on him figuring out a bomb sent from the future, or a particularly tricky killbot or how to power a force field. 

"Tony?" Clint asked, and swallowed his worry because there was always the chance that he was worrying over tanking stocks or something. Pepper _had_ said that he'd been weird in meetings, and who knew what damage he might have done. "Everything alright?"

Tony looked up, smiled, his eyes dark and intense, and went back to his tapping.

"Tony?"

"Shh. Working, Clint."

"On what? You accidentally sell the company or something? What's with the super typing?" Clint asked, tossing his paperwork to the window seat as he got up to pad over and drape himself over Tony's back. Or at least, as best he could with the chair's backrest in his way, digging into him as he leaned. Tony's hand came up, reaching to grip the back of his neck and Clint ducked under the searching fingers, sighing as Tony gave a little squeeze.

"Barton," Tony said, warningly, and Clint grinned and rested his chin on Tony's head.

When he tried to straighten, Tony didn't let go.

\-----

So Tony wanted to type--or whatever--without being bugged. That was okay. Clint could get on board with that. 

But then, he was on board with just about anything Tony at the moment, and some part of his fuzzed-out brain recognized that he was being stupid. The rest of it didn't care. The _rest_ of it wanted Tony's hand back on his neck, on his head. Around his throat, if Tony wanted.

Clint fidgeted, then stilled. Started to say something, then quieted. Tony was looking at him, the intense obsessive look turned away from his computer and focused on every shift and sound that Clint made without his leave. It was starting to get under his skin in an almost physical way, the build-up of tiny mistakes, of Tony not saying _good_ or _you're doing fine, Clint_.

His need for approval was pretty pathetic. He couldn't meet Tony's eyes. Tony kept saying, "Eyes," and Clint brought his head up, but then his gaze would slide downwards again. His heart thumped. He couldn't really hear Tony over it.

It was a bad drop. He needed out. Usually, Tony would notice things were going sour and offer the halt if Clint couldn't make himself call it. Now he just made a disapproving sound as Clint shifted restlessly, unable to settle.

"Clint?" Tony asked, "Are you listening?"

"Yes," Clint said, and his voice sounded thick, muffled against Tony's thigh, his hands palm up in Tony's lap, wrists crossed. Tony touched his fingers and he jumped, not liking the focus on his hands, his mind spinning back to all the times--missions gone sideways, mostly--he'd been threatened with broken fingers, broken hands. With losing his ability to fight, survive, work. 

He closed his eyes and let his breath out, the stillness in his chest nauseating instead of calming. "Tony," he said, and meant it to be a protest. It came out as a plea, breathy and questioning.

"I've been telling you," Tony said, even, no hint of his usual humor, of the _messing-with-you_ grin that usually underlay his voice when he talked that kind of shit, "To behave yourself."

"Yeah," Clint didn't mean to agree, and shivered when Tony's hand stroked over his again, flattening his fingers out against his thigh, before shifting to his head, to grip his hair. Clint whined. Wasn't sure if he wanted more, or for Tony to stop. 

And then another voice was saying, "I got a call in. I need Clint to fly me."

"Take your bike."

"To the helicarrier?" Steve asked. Clint could feel his eyes, intent on his back, but he didn't raise his head. 

Tony stopped. Turned that logic over for too long, and then said, "Fine," and let him go, "Go with Cap, Clint."

Clint waited a second and then another, for Tony to bring him back, then slid his hands out of Tony's lap and into his own, pulled close to his body. Stared stupidly down at them. 

"Now, Clint," Tony said, and Clint nodded and climbed back to his feet to stumble after Steve.


	9. Chapter 9

They went to the jet--or at least the upper floor that functioned as a hangar bay--but didn't go anywhere else, which was probably good, because Clint felt like throwing up, pacing from jet to elevator door and back, and over and over until the knot in his chest started to loosen. 

Steve didn't say "Easy," or shush him or do any of the obnoxious dom things Clint more or less expected of him. He just leaned against the wall near the elevators and watched him try to walk it off and it kind of made Clint want to kiss him. 

He didn't. 

"I know this has happened before," Steve said, after a while, quietly, "Not just the time in the kitchen, but _before_. Am I right?"

Clint nodded. He would have lied for Tony's sake, because Steve had that judgey solemn thing going, all gentle and even toned concern, but he was too far under still to try to fight it. Steve's authoritative calm was doing weird fucking things to what was left of his mind.

"I got sucked in," Clint said, more peevishly than he meant to. "Damn it. I _knew_ I should have been watching for it, but--" He hadn't meant to go down. It was just. Just _Tony_. 

"I know," Steve said. His patience was going from comforting to almost grating. The unruffled way he was watching Clint pace was fucking _infuriating_. "I'd tell you to be careful, but that's probably a lost cause," he said, and sounded both resigned and exasperated. Like he was a junior Coulson or something. Clint came to a stop to give him a look, and Steve shrugged. 

Clint kept his glare up, but Steve didn't even bother trying to stare him down. "You probably don't want to hear this from me," he said, looking past Clint, at the jet. It was a bit weird for Steve to be going out of his way to be non-confrontational instead of letting his Captain America vibes do their thing.

"I don't want to hear a lot of things," Clint said, "don't let that stop you." He had more than a slight suspicion that he'd hear a lot of thing he didn't like in the near future anyway. No reason to not start it off with Cap.

"No," Steve said, "I mean, maybe I shouldn't say anything about _sub stuff_."

Clint rolled his eyes. "Oh, god. Is someone teaching you to be polite? Don't listen to them, Cap." Awkward, trying-not-to-step-on-toes Cap was way more awkward than accidentally-offensive Cap anyway. "Shoot. I promise I can take it."

Steve said, "Alright," and didn't really look at Clint to say, "I think you're going down so easy because Tony hasn't been taking care of you after. You need--"

"You _and_ Bruce, huh? He thinks I'm getting _high strung_." Clint snorted, "I'm _fine_ , Cap."

"Okay," Steve said, "I wasn't suggesting you should do anything. I was just going say, _if_ you needed someone to--"

"Oh my god," Clint said, "This is not my life." All he could see in his mind was the horribly ridiculous poster Coulson used to have in his office, all set jaw and flinty no-nonsense eyes, jets trailing patriotic contrails behind a very blond Captain America. An invitation to fight Nazis or something disguising the fact that it was basically a blown-up centerfold. "Are you offering me what I think you're offering me?"

"I think so," Steve said, in that way he did when he wasn't sure they were all on the same cultural page. 

"Because it sounds like you're offering to top me."

"Oh," Steve said, then, "Yeah, that's what I meant." 

Clint laughed, surprising himself, but Steve looked so confused at _his_ confusion and was still blinking at him like he couldn't figure out what was going on. "As a friend, Clint," he said, and Clint snorted in a new fit of laughter.

"What? Am I being era inappropriate?"

"They coined a phrase for that?" It was hilarious. Clint had the sense that he needed a fucking grip, but Cap's life might actually be more ridiculous than his. "Yeah. Yeah you might be, a bit."

"Oh," Steve said, again. "Um. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable." It sounded like a canned response, and Clint felt a bit bad for making Cap feel his out-of-sync-ness, because that was a good way to make Steve spend hours looking mopily out over at new New York while playing forties music. 

"You didn't," Clint said, still grinning, "As a friend, huh? I'll think about it, okay?" 

"Should I have run this by Tony?" Steve asked, like he'd just thought of it, "Is that what the problem is? I should have asked Tony?"

" _I'll_ ask Tony," Clint said, a bit too fast. Then clarified, "I'm not that into that doms arranging shit without you thing." 

Steve nodded, then, like he thought it was his turn to share, "In the war no one was really anyone's. There were sweethearts, but you couldn't really count on that right when you needed it, you know?"

Clint could imagine, but saying so seemed kind of snotty, considering it had been World War Two. Instead he gave Steve a couple seconds of his thoughtful, thinking look--a slight frown, a bit of a nod--and changed the subject, jerking a thumb in the direction of the jet. "So. Fury?" he said, and Steve smiled, small but also like he was really pleased with himself.

"It was a cover," he said, "And Natasha's got an eye on Tony, so don't worry about him."

He hadn't been. It hadn't occurred to him yet to be. "Oh shit," he said.

"JARVIS alerted me," Steve told him, before he could work himself back into antsy pacing, "Looks like Tony set up alerts after. After last time."

"Great," Clint said. It felt hollow.

\----- 

Medical kept Tony for two days of testing, and didn't find anything wrong other than the occasional occurrence of something that looked mildly like a panic attack. It could explain everything, even the cold sweats. Stress could do weird things to a man.

Bruce's theory was looking good. 

"Except I don't really feel that panicky," Tony said, pouring himself another cup of coffee like he was making up for not having been allowed any at medical, "And the last time I had a panic attack, it didn't really involve memory gaps. It had a lot more to do with not being able to breathe and," he gestured vaguely at his chest, "certain alterations to my anatomy."

Clint looked at him and frowned at the circle of light glowing through his shirt.

"It's not only a night light," Tony told him, and tapped it with a finger. Clint wondered how much of that tap he could feel. How much of the vibration of the casing was perceptible in bone or skin. 

Tony slurped his coffee down and refilled his cup again and Clint leaned his head on one hand at the kitchen table and looked out the window, across the city.

"You'd probably sleep better," Tony was saying, "Without it shining in your face," and Clint looked back over at where he was leaning against the wall. 

"Huh?"

"If I did anything bad to you, Clint, anything _really_ bad--" 

"Don't be so Bruce about this," Clint said, "I'm fine." Tony ignored it.

"--you know you won't stop me," he finished. He had a JARVIS alert and Clint started to remind him that he'd just said so, but Tony waved his coffee cup at him in a _shut up_ gesture. 

"My JARVIS alert auto-starts security video, Barton. Since I have to work around your lies and obfuscation, I thought it might be a good idea." Tony didn't sound pissed. He sounded tired. Clint peered back out of the window, at the street below.

"You don't have to--" he didn't want to say 'break up'. Maybe 'quit' or 'stop' would have worked, but he just let the sentence hang. "It's not like you're _dangerous_ , Tony." It was just that _he'd_ gotten stupid. Let his guard down. Let Tony down, or least let him get into trouble. He tried a different tack, glanced back over at where Tony was turning his coffee cup around and around in his hands, "Or have you decided that you get to make all the decisions now and I just listen?"

Tony blinked. "What? No. Clint-- _Clint_." There wasn't much that could render Tony speechless, and Clint wasn't sure whether or not he should be proud that _he_ was one of those thing. Not when Tony's serious expression had gone sad and troubled and maybe a bit angry to boot. Clint waved the remark away.

"Okay. Fine," he said. It was raining. The road below was a parade of black umbrellas, dotted here and there with color. "I wouldn't want to give you a panic attack or anything." It was mean. Clint didn't care. 

Tony sniffed. "You might, actually. When I saw the video--Jesus, Clint. You looked like you were _freaking out_. Why didn't you _stop me_? Why didn't you _break my fucking neck_?"

Clint shrugged, not looking at Tony but out the window. In the reflection, he could see Tony put his cup down and his hands up in a surrender gesture, even though Clint hadn't said anything. "Okay. Okay. Never mind." 

"You'd have noticed, usually," Clint admitted, "I was--I got confused. It won't happen again."

He heard Tony walk over, and then there were hands on his head. Tony pulling him closer. "It won't," Tony said, meaning something completely different. 

Clint put an arm around Tony's middle and pressed his cheek into Tony's stomach. "Always knew you'd dump me eventually, Stark," he joked.

"Hah. You can't rid of Tony Stark that easily," Tony said, and let go of Clint to pull something from his pocket and press it into Clint's hand. "Wear it."

The collar didn't really look like one, made out of artfully woven together pieces of dark fabric, gently reflective--like Thai silk, according to Tony, but _pricier_ \--and closing with a clasp mechanism made out of something indestructible that looked like silver. There was nothing on it as inelegant as rings or a buckle. It could have been jewelry, and Natasha had a little dress she claimed it would go _amazing_ with, if Clint wasn't going to wear it.

"What's the point of an unbreakable, unopenable clasp on a collar that an ordinary pair of scissors can cut through?" Clint asked, like he had before, because making fun of the collar--or really, making fun of Tony's upscale taste--usually made Tony smirk and talk shit about artistry and symbolism and crap like that when they both knew Tony just liked fancy things.

"The point," Tony said, as Clint ran the fabric part of the collar through his hands, feeling the familiar weave under his fingers, "is that you can get out of it on your own. Without me"

Clint snorted and handed the collar back to Tony so he could put it on him, "Jesus, Stark. Not with the metaphor spiel again."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for how long it's taking me to update wips lately. 
> 
> But here is a banner from [Neffie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/originalneffie/pseuds/Neffie):
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/631260
> 
> :D

"That collar doesn't go with anything you own," Natasha told him, again, though whether it was her way of telling him that she noticed when he was wearing it, or her way of pointing out his lack of fashion-according-to-Natasha sense, Clint wasn't entirely sure. 

It was true that there really wasn't much sense in trying to fancy him up. Tony's attempts to outfit him in elegance really just made it a lot more obvious that he was kind of hard wired towards grungy or at least scruffy, and even the world's most ridiculously conceived--and priced--collar wouldn't do much to fix that.

Clint fussed with the clasp. It was always weird when he hadn't worn the thing in a while, and soft as the fabric was, it felt uncomfortably constricting. He'd had doms and no collar before, but the reverse felt a bit strange. Tony's we're-on-time-out-till-this-gets-sorted deal seemed like the sort of call they were supposed to make together. 

That Tony had _agreed_ they would make together. 

"So Stark pulled the rip-cord," Natasha told him, seeing everything in an angle that was unsupportively not the same one that Clint saw it in, "that's generally considered anyone's prerogative. You should be gracious and not sulk about it."

Which was true, except that usually one of them bailing was followed by at least twenty seconds of worry and _are you okay?_ and then a long, tangled-together nap followed by something to eat and maybe a talk. Not 'wear this collar, now get out'. 

"I'm not sulking," Clint said, "I'm planning my counter move." Natasha gave him a look that was equal parts fond and exasperated, and Clint decided to react only to the first of those and grinned back at her. 

"If your counter move is to look pathetic until he reconsiders, it's not going to work," she said, but kindly. Like she thought that was useful advice that Clint actually needed spelled out to him. 

"If Tony thinks he's not capable of making responsible decisions," Clint said, slowly, and Natasha gave him a look that might have been disapproval, but might also have been admiration at his sneakiness. It wasn't like he'd learned nothing from her loop-holing, "then I guess I agree with him."

"Oh?"

"He's not capable of making responsible decisions."

\-----

"It's too bad," Tony said, "about your going into the shoot at stuff line of work. Because I think you missed your real calling. You could have been an amazing sleazy lawyer."

"I'm taking that as a compliment," Clint said, with a grin that he knew was more challenge than friendly, waiting for Tony to object and turn it into a fight. 

He didn't. He did look tired and pale, and with that weird crinkle in his brow that he got when something he was building refused to work properly. Clint figured that crinkle was for him at the moment, and lifted his chin stubbornly. _Fuck_ Tony if he thought Clint was something he could get to _work_ the way he wanted if he just knew what strings to pull. 

Like he didn't think Clint could pull strings right back at him. 

"If--You said you would respect _no_ , Tony. What happened to _listening goes both ways_?" 

Tony's eye twitched. "Well, _Barton_. I don't know how short your memory is, but I don't recall you _saying_ no. I _recall_ that being the fucking problem."

There was an edge in it. Aggressive and maybe bordering on nasty, but it was just Tony being tired and angry and not Tony losing his fucking marbles so Clint ignored it in favor of crossing his arms over his chest and leaned his hip against the edge of Tony's work table to glare back at him. 

Tony actually folded under it, sighing and leaning back, then scrubbed a hand over his face and said, "Jesus, Clint. It's just--It's not a good idea to trust me right now, alright?"

"I'm _not_ trusting you. You can't tell me you're dangerously fucked in the head, then think I'm going to do what you say." There was the messy fact that Clint had _known_ things weren't right with Tony but had _still_ been doing what he said, but if the same thought occurred to Tony, he didn't mention it. 

"You can't call stop to a stop," he said instead, looking the faintest bit amused, the crinkle softening a bit out of his eyebrow, "That's some kind of safety double jeopardy or something."

"Oh, please," Clint said, even though Tony probably made sense on that one. Still. It wasn't the point. 

"You can play any logic game you want, Clint," Tony said, "but if you can't pull yourself out, then you're just not safe with--"

"Right," Clint snapped, "This is about things that are wrong with _me_ ," and then wished he hadn't because the amused look that had started to play at the edges of Tony's expression fell away again and he just looked shadowed and pained. 

"Tony," Clint started, without having anything to follow it up with, trying for contrite and hoping his best _I fucked up, Cap_ face would do the trick, but the smile Tony gave in response wasn't any less hurt looking.

"That's not fair."

Clint shrugged one shoulder. It wasn't. Tony hadn't ever made things be about the things that were wrong with Clint, even though they would have made pretty easy targets, a lot of the time. Even though, sometimes, things _were_ about the things that were wrong with Clint. 

" _I'm_ not safe, okay? Is that better?" Tony asked, and touched him. Just on the elbow and just with his fingertips. Like he thought contact might be dangerous. 

Clint unfolded his arms and, without invitation, stepped into Tony's space to put his arms loosely around him. "So you're sick and you're going to kick me out so you can suffer alone? You want me to find you a box to curl up and die in, too?" 

Tony snorted. "What? It's not like I'm homeless or--or some kind of stray cat, Barton. I can curl up and die in my king size bed just fine, thanks."

"I thought that might not be melodramatic enough for you," Clint said, "I'm just trying to keep you happy here."

"Good job. Because I'm _thrilled_. You can't tell?"

Clint ignored it. "Stop worrying about me, Tony. You don't have to keep proving you're a good dom. Especially not by being an idiot. You're better than the rest of the--"

Tony wormed a hand up between them to push Clint's mouth closed. Said, "Stop with the flattery while I still feel flattered."

Clint grinned. Said, "You're the best, Tony," against his fingers. 

"No. You've just had lousy taste up till now," Tony said, and pushed him back a little, "And don't think I don't appreciate the sweet talk, but I'm not changing my mind."

"No."

Tony gave him a weird look. Some mix of surprise, confusion and maybe even a little bit of offended dom. For all of Tony's leniency, he wasn't really used to be being told _no_. Clint wasn't really used to _telling_ him 'no'. It was surprisingly satisfying. 

"You don't call all the shots" Clint told him, "Did I say I was okay with leaving you to fend for yourself?"

"In the wilderness of this luxury downtown high-rise?" Tony asked, with a smirk that was more ironic than amused or friendly. Clint sort of hated that look. "I think I'll be safe from the wolves, thanks."

"I'm not changing my mind either," Clint told him, "So I'm not sure why you think this is going to go your way."

"I can't imagine why people are always so surprised to find out you're a sub," Tony said, "Because this is just the picture of submiss--"

"You have a choice, Tony. You tell me we're over and you take your collar back, or you shut the hell up and let me make sure you don't fall out a window or set yourself on fire or something."

Tony blinked. Then he said, "I--Was I ever in danger of falling out a window? At any point? Is this another thing you haven't been telling me?"

"You're not worried about setting yourself on fire?" 

"Not really," Tony said, and shrugged, "I mean. I've done that before."

\-----

"I'm involved in a power struggle with Tony," Clint told Bruce, just because it seemed fair to bring him up to speed. Bruce didn't necessarily look like he _wanted_ to be brought up to speed, so Clint added, "And Steve's offering to show me a good old fashioned time." 

"Nice collar," Bruce said, ignoring all of his news. It was a weak ploy at subject change, since it wasn't like he'd never seen it before. Clint grinned anyway. It was a _stupid_ collar. It said Tony all over it.

"Tony thinks it gives him a tactical advantage," Clint said, pulling a stool over with his foot and this time Bruce cracked a smile but still shoved his pens into a drawer and moved his notes out of Clint's reach. Clint snagged his mug while he was doing it, but it was filled with tea. 

Clint made a face and put it back down. Said, "Geez. Make a guy feel welcome," and Bruce snorted and pulled the mug away from him. 

"Are you here hiding?" he asked, blunt and not bothering to phrase it in a less annoying way. Some way that _didn't_ make it sound like he thought Clint was a victim of domestic abuse. Clint stole the tea back. 

"No. I'm not here _hiding_ ," Clint grouched, then said, "You know that this kind of thing is why I talk to Thor. He doesn't do this concern for helpless subs thing." 

Bruce gave him a look, but didn't mention the recent occasions that he _had_ been there hiding, or that one of the team had had to bail him out. Instead he said, "Thor has no idea about half the things you and Natasha tell him," but in a way that sounded like maybe Thor had been talking to _him_ about how weird he thought Clint and Natasha were. Clint tilted his head in question, but Bruce didn't elaborate. Bruce feast-of-oxen Banner probably thought Thor made perfect sense. 

Clint took a sip of the tea. It was warm at best, and that only barely. "I didn't know you were commiserating with Thor," he said. "Did he pass on all of Nat's secrets?"

"If he did I'm not passing them on to _you_ ," Bruce said, and rested his folded arms on the table. Not really with finality, but like he was waiting for something. Small talk time was over, then. Clint considered pushing it by telling him more about Steve and his socially awkward offers, but that made him think about Coulson and how much more fun it would have been to tell _Phil_ about it. 

_Too bad you're a dom, Phil, huh?_ Clint imagined gloating, and grinned at the thought, then dropped it when he saw Bruce giving him a funny look. 

"Sure you're okay? You look kind of--" but he let it hang. 

"If you say _high strung_ again, Bruce, I swear to god," Clint said, not finishing his sentence either, picking up a glass rod Bruce had left on the table. "Swizzle stick? And you say you're working," he smirked.

"Good luck with your power struggle," Bruce said, obviously trying to shoo him out. Clint refused to be shoo-ed, but he did set the swizzle stick down with pointed care, more or less where he'd picked it up from and folded his arms neatly on the table, not really intending to mirror Bruce, just indicating his willingness to not fuck with Bruce's things. Bruce was usually impervious to good sub manners. It was obnoxious to not be able to play him, but this time he sighed and sat back and gave Clint the smile he used when shit involved science and he didn't have the answers.

\-----

Bruce might be the answer guy, but the next time Tony went off the deep end and tried to bounce his frustration with whatever he was doing on his computer onto Clint, he still didn't have any and just stood there and regarded Clint's disgruntled expression with one of his own and said, "Clint."

"No." He'd been saying that a lot lately. It was losing it's shine. 

" _Clint_ ," Bruce repeated anyway. He had a weird look behind his glasses, but he also looked exasperated. Like he had no idea what he thought Clint was doing and doubted that Clint did either but before he could come up with a snippy response, Tony stalked back through and without meaning to Clint went very, very still. 

Tony froze and looked at him and then at Bruce and then said, "Clint."

"Just everybody stop _saying_ that," Clint snapped, and took a breath. Then he fixed Tony with his best approximation of the look Steve had worn on the poster in Phil's office and said, "If you apologize I will break your fingers."

He might anyway. Tony acted a lot crazier when he didn't sleep or when he decided to do stupid things like go downstairs and box Happy as way of sulking about being off active rotation. 

Breaking his fingers would solve a lot of issues, including the holing up to type all night and the sneaking away to fuss with the suit. 

Tony might have even taken his threat of violence seriously, because he let his breath out in a sigh and made a half-aborted helpless gesture, just raising a hand halfway and then dropping it like he didn't know what to say if apologies were off the table. 

Eventually he went with, "Be good, Clint," and gave him a quick pat. Just stroking over his head once, smoothing his hair back down, and then Tony was gone, retreating out into the hall. 

Clint made a soft sound at his back, then swallowed it and said, "Yeah. Back at you."


	11. Chapter 11

Not being a scientist meant that there wasn't much to do other than try to supervise Bruce's one-man think-tank progress and hang around Tony so he could bully him out of his more stupid ideas, and it was all cutting into his range time, but at least was also cutting into Tony's potential accidental suicide time. 

And possibly Tony's solo freak-out time, which it turned out Tony had impressive dedication to. 

Along with some kind of insulting dedication to trying to shut Clint out. Maybe to shield him from the mind-losing that Tony seemed to think he could hide, even though Clint was usually witness numero uno to the moments when Tony was operating on even less than his usual number of marbles.

"Stop," Tony snapped, the fifth time Clint poked his head into the living area of the penthouse to make sure Tony wasn't flight testing, incinerating, or electrifying anything, including himself. "I have things to do. _You_ have things to do. You're shooting ten minutes at a time. Maybe fifteen. You've been here three times in the last hour. Even though I'm stuck in this equipmentless _hinterland_." 

"I can be where I want," Clint said, gruff. Pulling himself up to his full height, unleaning from his slouch in the archway to the elevators and crossing his arms stubbornly. If he didn't want to listen to Tony, there was really not a damn thing Tony could do about it. Short, maybe, of taking some kind of more formalized action, except that Tony probably had no idea how to start that process and Pepper wasn't likely to help him try to shake anyone willing and able to babysit him. 

"Fine." Tony waved a hand dismissively, not getting into it. His usual reaction to Clint digging in his heels was to dodge the confrontation, act like he was above getting into it with subs, then sulk. "Fine. Misbehave, then."

Usually that would be annoying as hell, and Tony's put-upon _people will judge me, not you_ dom woefulness even more so, but it was lacking the usual bullshit long-suffering face. Like Tony was mostly tired and going through the song-and-dance like a formality he wanted to get done with. 

Maybe trying to get Clint to leave and stay left so he could take naps he was pretending to not need.

"You look like shit," Clint told him, then decided to be nice and slipped into _deferential sub_ to add, "Tony."

Tony gave him a disbelieving, exasperated look that was a lot more like his normal self. Clint's bullshit, at least, was still working. At full power, even.

"Really, Barton? _Really?_ You think that'll work? _Tony?_ " Tony's impersonation of the tone was sort of insulting. A television-born mimicry, too high and too breathy to be even in the ballpark of accurate for Clint. It was like a bad version of a persona Nat might pull on. Clint raised his eyebrows a little in offended question, but Tony either didn't notice or didn't care.

" _Tony_ , I'm not going to do anything you say anymore, _Tony_. I'm going to be a little shit, _Tony_."

Clint grinned. He was a man of few talents, but the talents he had he was fucking stellar at, and little shittiness was right up there.

"I'm going to lie to you, _Tony_. Even though we have an agreement about safety. _Specifically_ about safety. _Tony_."

"I thought we were done with that?"

Tony's disbelieving exasperated look turned into just plain disbelieving, then into some darker version of it, and then to something like resignation before going right back to disbelieving, then settled into a flat kind of consideration. The screwdriver he'd been aimlessly toying with hit the table with a plasticky clatter and rolled in a wobbly circle.

"And just _how_ , Barton, are we supposed to be _done with it_?"

He couldn't tell if Tony was just in a foul mood, or spiraling, but when Clint searched his face for clues, he huffed a humorless laugh and leaned back, looking up. Letting Clint look him full in the face. The dark circles under his eyes were getting to be a bit racoon-y.

"I'm sorry," Clint said. Again. 

Tony made the handwave again, brushing it aside. Ignoring the unusualness of the apology this time. A lot of things had been unusual, lately. They were both probably getting used to it. 

"Don't worry about it. It's not like I can do anything. One, I see you doing your mini-Thor buff poses thing. Good job with the threatening loom, by the way. Grow a few feet and turn greenish and you might have something there. And two, _Barton_ ," Tony paused for emphasis. His impersonation of a classic dom tone wasn't any better than his impersonation of a sub one, but it was dark and unhappy and not funny. " _Two_ , is that we had a deal."

"I broke it first."

"Yeah." The _and now I'm not sure I can trust you as far as I can throw you_ was silent but pretty fucking strongly implied. What Tony said instead was, "And if I was going to not stick to _my_ side of it, I would beat the living hell out of you."

"Oh?"

"Except that you'd probably like it."

Clint looked away, then back. "Not if it's because you're mad at me." He sounded a bit, embarrassingly, like Tony's _good sub_ impression, just less fake and ridiculous, but at least Tony huffed at the sound of it and cracked an actual smile. Clint didn't even care that he was probably laughing _at_ him. 

Mostly didn't care.

"I--Oh, fuck, Clint." Tony shook his head, then looked at him and snorted like he was repressing a laugh. Clint tilted his head at the sound--more threat than submission, but it made Tony crack up more, into what could have been stupid, helpless chuckling, or maybe even giggles, if Tony hadn't been obviously choking them back. 

"Yeah, you're real scary, Hawkeye." Tony's dark look was a smirk now. Real, and amused and it softened his face, making him look more regular-tired than sick-tired. "With your dangerous assassin vibes." Tony made wiggly finger motions with both hands like he was miming a magician show. "But don't be mad, _Tony_."

"Well, when you say it like _that_ \--"

"It sounds like I could have you on your knees by my feet, if I wanted," Tony finished for him, not making it a question, then let his breath out in a long sigh and tipped his head to the side in one of those un-dom-like gestures that was usually all backwards bravado, except for when it was Tony playing helpless inept rich boy like he though he could fool Pepper and scam his way out of paperwork.

"Steve wanted to know--"

"Oh, goddamn _Steve_."

"Yeah. He's really out of line being concerned about his sharpshooter _not_ shooting. I tried to tell him that, but you know how he is about picky little things like people not getting themselves and others killed."

"Oh," Clint said. Again. He'd sort of thought it was going to be about the _other_ thing, but it looked like Steve really was waiting for him to broach the subject with Tony on his own. 

He should really do that before it ended up being another lie by default. Whether or not Tony directly, specifically asked. Nat's advice was always so _bad_ , Clint wasn't really sure why he went along with it as often as he did.

"I'll put the time in," Clint promised, even though that was something he didn't usually answer to Tony for. "If you go someplace where someone is watching you."

"What? You're trusting me to go alone? You don't want to hold my hand and walk me to the kitchen?"

Clint snorted and turned to go, but just as he did, Tony piped up again. "Bruce is worried about you."

"That's why you're mad again?"

"I'm not _mad_. I'm just--"

"If you say 'disappointed' I will come over there and _actually_ kick your ass. _Tony_." 

Tony made a pouty face, but Clint was pretty sure it was just reflex. That he wasn't actually in a joking mood, or kidding, or probably even aware of his facial expressions. "Well, I _am_ disappointed." There was enough of a whine in it that Clint smiled. He wanted to go over and maybe put his head on Tony's knee like some kind of loyal dog cheering up its master.

Which was a pretty tactically unsound idea, so he didn't, but he missed Tony's hand on his head, in his hair, absently playing through it while he calculated god knew what or scribbled corrections on proposed blueprints.

"If you're getting turned on by my hurt feelings," Tony started, sounding affronted, and Clint shook himself out of it.

"You're talking to Bruce."

"Of course I'm talking to Bruce. Why wouldn't I be talking to Bruce? Did he do something that I should know about that would cause me to _not_ talk to Bruce, that you're _also_ not telling me?"

He hadn't sworn Bruce to secrecy, but he also hadn't considered the extent of things _Bruce_ might tell Tony. Clint twitched, saw Tony notice, and gave up.

"Steve offered to--" he had to stop and pretend to scratch his arm, surprised at how awkward he felt about it, and about how the words stuck. "To take care of me." He stole a quick look at Tony. "I told him not to say anything until I'd asked you."

"You didn't ask me."

"I was going to."

Tony made a considering _hm_ sound. Not like he was surprised but not like he'd been expecting it either, which was a point in Bruce's secret-keeping favor. 

"That's--" Tony started.

"Wildly inappropriate?" Clint supplied.

Tony fiddled with his screwdriver, rolling it back and forth, then smiled a little. "A little weird," he corrected, "But kind of cute, in a wacky old timey way. Also," he spun the screwdriver on the table top, one way and then the other, "a decent idea."

"Tony--"

"Because it's not like _you_ tell me anything. Not anything _true_ anyway." It was hard to tell after a point if Tony was seriously offended, or just being a shit. Clint had been tending towards _just a shit_ as the most viable conclusion, but now he thought it was back to--or had been the whole time--a good solid _you can't trust me right now_ , with an added side of post-brooding, _and I can't trust -you-, you liar_.

"At least Steve will be--" Tony stopped, made a scrunched-face expression, then looked unhappy. "Properly observant," he finished. 

"I'll talk to him," Clint said, started to say _Tony_ , decided it felt weird after all of Tony's picking, and went with, "sir."

"Don't. You sound like JARVIS. And _I'll_ talk to him. I'm not arranging behind your back. You can be there if you like. I just want to make sure I'm getting the _actual_ story."

"Tony."

"Nope. You've used up all your Tonys."

Clint considered mentioning his option to veto, just for the sake of not surrendering the power struggle, then decided against it. Instead he asked, "If I get you a sandwich, will it make you less cranky?"

Tony looked up like he wanted to snap something, then made a funny uncertain head-bob instead. "No promises." 

"Okay. You staying here, or coming with?" The power struggle was a wash. Or at least this skirmish was. Tony giving in to being organized was doing a lot to make Clint feel a hazy wash of pleased-with-himself warmth.

It was a fucking sneaky reverse manouvre, effectively twisting _keep an eye on Tony_ into _look after Tony_ , which was really too close to _make Tony happy_ to be seperatable from _listen to Tony_. 

"Hey," Tony called, quietly and in a gentler tone than any he'd been using. Clint grunted a response, like he hadn't noticed the change but Tony went on unfazed, "If you see Steve, tell him he can send me an invitation to parlay anytime. And that we can do it in a ye olde times fashion that he'll be comfortable with."

"I'll get my lance," Clint snorted, then, when Tony didn't answer or dismiss him, amended to, "Yes, Tony."

"Good boy." Tony spun his screwdriver again, watching until it slowed, then, still looking down, said, "This is going to be fine, Clint. Okay?" Then added, "Me, I mean. Not the lying hiding sneaking scaring Bruce thing."


	12. Chapter 12

Clint went down to the range and made good on his promise to Tony to make good on his responsibilities to Cap, the team, and America. Maybe to _Earth_ , if he wanted to get really self-important and dramatic about it.

Mostly, though, he just wanted to avoid giving Steve until he was ready to talk to him or be talked _at_. There was probably a point at which procrastinating on inviting Steve to invite Tony to hash out the terms of his loaning out could be counted as further defiance and dishonesty, and Clint had the feeling he was skating on thin enough ice that _I haven't seen him yet_ was probably a better bet than _I just haven't done it_.

He wasn't sure Tony could deal with a lot of rebellion at the moment, anyway. Even though Tony was usually pretty relaxed about exerting overt control, _actually_ losing control was doing a number on him.

Or at least, that would explain why Tony was back on the _lies lies filthy lies_ track that Clint thought was over, understood, and forgiven, if not forgotten. It probably meant Tony was getting worse, or at least that Tony thought he was, which might mean that Clint wasn't alone in the lying, sneaking, and hiding. Possibly not even in the scaring-Bruce department. Tony, he realized, hadn't just been hanging around half building robots and then destroying them. Tony probably wasn't shaking strange and cryptic answers out of their Thor-of-rambling-fortune-telling, but he also wasn't likely to just wait for Bruce and-or medical to come up with answers and not try anything on his own.

Mostly because Tony was both smart _and_ stupid enough to think that trying to be his own health care provider was a reasonable plan of action.

\-----

"Did what you wanted," Clint told Tony, dropping himself onto Tony's giant bed. Landing in a messy sprawl on his stomach. "Shot lots of things. Or shot the same couple of things, but lots of times." Tony had less of his crap on his own floor than he had on _Clint's_ floor, which was somewhere between puzzling and obnoxious. Tony didn't even _do_ that much in his room, but at this point Clint had more of Tony's things than maybe Tony did.

If he didn't count jets, properties and satellite companies. Or cars and maybe hovercraft. There was the slight chance that Tony had hovercraft. Somewhere. Clint wouldn't have been surprised, anyway.

Tony gave him a look when he belly-crawled up the bed, but dropped a hand on his still-damp hair as soon as he was in reach. Asked, "You hit the gym showers?" in a doubtful tone, because _no one_ used the gym showers. Except maybe Steve. Clint grinned.

"Nope."

"That's--" Tony stopped, then made a face and pretended to be flicking something off his hand.

"Thought I'd invite you," Clint said, ignoring it. He probably was kind of gross. Gross, and on top of Tony's fancy covers. It used to be kind of strange to hang out on Tony's stupid gigantic bed, in his I-have-windows-instead-of-walls-because-I-can penthouse and feel not quite owned or kept, but something like it. Now, he only cared that the duvet cover was cool against his skin where his t-shirt was rucked up, and that there was enough room to get his whole length on the bed even though he was lying sideways across it. 

"That's a sexier offer when you don't smell like an old sneaker," Tony observed, but went back to petting him, fingers careful in his hair before they trailed down the side of his face then traced the top edge of the collar with a finger. Clint rolled his eyes. Twitched away from the tickling, then stilled when Tony's finger hooked under the collar and tugged.

The thing felt deceptively fragile even though Clint knew it wouldn't give unless he put some intentional effort into it, and he followed the pull automatically to make some slack. Letting Tony reel him in.

"Don't give me attitude," Tony warned, but mildly. Without even with his usual joking fake-stern tone. He sounded tired. 

Clint went with it anyway, dipping his head obediently and not saying anything that might come off like shit-talking. 

Tony snorted, then added "You're such a good boy," in the same tone, but grinned a little when Clint looked back up to search his face--brief, just checking that he was okay and still there and himself.

"Believe it." Clint twisted a bit as he let himself drop, so he could flop half on top of Tony, careful to avoid the arc reactor, for both of their sakes. Tony could get antsy and protective of it, and Clint had whacked himself on the housing enough times to stay aware and clear of it. "I'm _great_."

"Mm," Tony agreed, brushing fingers across Clint's throat, twisting the fabric of the collar a little, but not pulling. Just toying with it because it was Tony and he'd probably explode if he wasn't fussing with _something_. "I guess you're reasonably decent."

"Pff," Clint sniffed, offended, pressing the noise into Tony's skin. 

"You _are_ disgusting and on my bed," Tony pointed out, but his a grip on the collar was firmer now, which meant he didn't _actually_ want Clint to leave. Having all Tony's fingers under it, clinging, was pulling the damn thing into his throat.

Tony might have point. A bit of a point. He was also close to choking Clint. He pulled a bit against Tony's grip, but Tony's hand tightened, and Clint made a dramatic wheezing noise as subtle hint. Then, when it had no effect, tried, "Let me get out of my shirt." 

"And then come back."

"I'm not _going_ anywhere, Tony."

"Right. Yeah. Okay," Tony said, and let go before carefully straightening the collar, letting his touch be interrupted by Clint tugging bunched damp fabric over his head and tossing it onto the floor. 

"Less gross?"

Tony considered that, like it was a serious question, then said, "Not really," in an almost apologetic way, but tugged Clint back onto his chest. A little gingerly.

Which was understandable, because Clint was still a little sweat-damp, and sticking to Tony in a way that really wasn't that pleasant. He probably _did_ smell like the inside of someone's gym bag. "You behave?" Clint asked, draping an arm over Tony, but mostly so he could stretch his shoulder out. Tony misread it and traced Clint's arm with his fingertips, smirking, and _that_ at least was a more normal expression. That smug look he got when he thought Clint was being possessive.

"Sure. Look around. Tower still standing. Drapes not turned into dresses. And me. Waiting in bed for you." 

Tony's eyebrow waggle was a little lacking, but Clint grinned. Propped his chin against Tony's ribs to smirk at him. "Good," he said, and Tony puffed like he couldn't decide whether to be offended or amused. His fingers were at Clint's shoulder, then playing down the line of his spine and back up again before finally stilling at the back of his neck, fingers wrapping firmly, his thumb digging in on one side.

It made Clint relax, breath sighing out of him like he was being deflated. Leaving him pliant. And still disgustingly sticky. He had a distant awareness of that. Of the fact that he should go shower with or without Tony, but protest seemed suddenly off the table unless he wanted to get really serious about his it. And that was a lot less appealing than squirming himself closer to Tony--grossness be damned--so he could drop goofy kisses along Tony's ribs to get him back for the tickling.

"Hey. _Hey_." Tony gripped his neck tighter, then twitched and grabbed for his hair instead, pulling him away. Tony was totally entertained by him. Clint could tell. 

" _Quit_ , Barton," Tony said, pushing him away a bit as he released, "Go do your thing. Don't take forever."

Clint considered telling him _I'm not going anywhere_ again, then decided he'd better make his getaway while the getting was good and before they could get distracted into new arguments and side arguments and _arguments_ and rolled away to slide off the end of the bed.

It was awesome how far away that was.

Clint loved that fucking bed.

\-----

"So," Clint said again, when he came back from a quick Tony-less shower and perfunctory dry-off to kneel damp and naked on the edge of the mattress--on the far side, away from Tony, "I did what you said."

"You're _supposed_ to do what I say."

Clint didn't mention Tony vetoing that on the grounds of thinking he was enough of a threat to make any kind of difference to Clint, even though he could have. Tony got on the same page pretty quickly though, and gestured him over, saying, "Okay. Fine. You're very good. Which I already said. And I don't know if I actually owe you compliments for Avengering and Avengering related _things_."

"You can't _boss me_ about Avengers related things," Clint corrected, going over on hands and knees. Probably ruining the effect by arguing while he was doing it, but Tony didn't seem to mind. "You can compliment me anytime. For any reason. I'm not picky."

"Oh," Tony said, and lifted a hand so he could drop it onto Clint's head a little more heavily than was actually _nice_ , "Give me some reasons, then."

\-----

Clint gave him the very good reason of a blowjob, but did it lazy and slow just to make Tony crazy, which was maybe not the best plan, considering, but at least Tony made appreciative sounds and bucked and squirmed under him. Pulling his hair until it got to be too much and Clint let up, straightening enough that he could kiss the inside of Tony's bent knee.

"Whenever you're done catching your breath," Clint told him, "I'm listening."

"You are _not_ listening. You are not even _close_ to _listening_ ," Tony grouched, "And you're not done." 

"I might be."

That brought Tony to his elbows, and even with his hair ruffled and ridiculous looking, his face was serious. Eyes dark and--not dangerous, but just unreadable. "Clint--"

"You can bail anytime. Just say uncle and tap out." Clint offered him a crooked smile and kissed his knee again. Glanced questioningly back through the corner of his eye in a way that Tony would know was complete bullshit.

"Don't push me, Barton," was what he said. It wasn't exactly what Clint was angling for. "And _you_ don't tell me about tap outs."

He didn't really want to get back on that, but Tony didn't look more than a little annoyed and that could be at least partly because of his neglected hard-on. Before he could do anything else about it, or consider his doing-about options, Tony pushed himself the rest of the way up and kissed him, catching him by the shoulder and back of the head, but letting Clint take control the moment he started kissing back. The asshole was taking his veto seriously.

"Tony--"

"Shh." Tony murmured it against his mouth, hands on either side of Clint's head, holding him in place. "Stay with me, okay? Don't go anywhere. This would be a really bad time to have JARVIS think you need a rescue."

Clint glanced down at Tony's dick and then back up. Tried the _no kidding_ eyebrow raise he'd learned from Coulson and that Natasha could mimic with perfection. Clint's wasn't as good, but it was enough to make Tony snort and say, "Smartass," with the kind of amused approval that was probably enabling most of Clint's bad sub attitude problems. "Give me your hand."

Clint offered it, palm up, then wrinkled his nose when Tony drizzled lube over his fingers. Messy and without warning. "Geez, Stark."

Tony ignored it, flipping the bottle cap shut with his thumb before tossing the thing aside. "Since I'm old and tired and sickly and you think I'm incompetent," he said, " _you_ can do the work."

"I already did work," Clint complained, moving his fingers around. Trying to spread the slick without spilling any more of it.

"Do some more. I'm frail." He flopped back and waved a hand in an imperious go-ahead gesture before tucking the arm comfortably under his head. Looking totally fucking ridiculous.

He licked his lower lip when Clint touched his hole with his slicked up fingers, and Clint knew he would bite down as soon as he pushed in and kind of wanted to see that happen, but Tony was watching him all bright-eyed and intense in the way he got when something was a challenge, but one that Tony was sure he was more than equal to.

Which was just weird. He'd been more than equal to Clint for awhile now.

"You okay?" Tony asked, "Having fun? Paying attention? Want to try doing that a little faster?" 

Tony was going to start talking, then. Great. Clint tried to ignore it, but Tony hooked him with one heel, digging it into his hip to get his attention. "Clint?"

"Yes." That was a _yes, Tony_ yes, but tending also in the direction of _shut the fuck up, Tony_. Just a little bit. If Tony caught it, he didn't seem to give a shit, dropping the whole thing when Clint got another finger in in favor of rolling his hips up. 

"Good?" Clint hinted, smirking and twisting his fingers.

" _Fuck_ ," Tony panted, "Get hard if you're not. I'm not waiting."

Clint was pretty much there already, but he gave himself a couple of firm strokes with his free hand before pulling his fingers free of Tony and lining up. "'Kay." He sounded rougher than Tony, and low voiced. Automatically dropping his volume to avoid missing or competing with orders. Even without looking he knew Tony was either grinning at it, or getting a serious, intent look.

"Ask nicely," Tony said, and that was definitely a grinning tone. He shifted a little to wrap a leg around Clint, dropping the other over his arm and arching his back, pressing down onto Clint just enough to make him shiver, then drawing away again. "Come on, Barton."

"I--"

"Use your words."

He was pretty sure he was supposed to be doing this _for Tony_ , so Clint considered going along with Tony's keep away games, except that Tony talking shit and being totally fucking entertained by himself wasn't something he wanted to waste, so he swallowed and offered, "Please let me, Tony."

"Let you?"

"Let me fuck you," Clint said and added "Please," again.

Tony dawdled on giving him the okay, mostly because Tony was an asshole, but as soon as he was pushing in, and Tony was letting his breath out in low moans, Clint forgave it and the annoying babble and the making Clint ask for permission to service him.

"Move," Tony told him, as soon as he was seated, "I'm good with the moving." He sounded a little breathless.

Clint nodded, and wrapped a hand around Tony's cock without being told. Hoping to get him off while he was still _there_. Everything was so _good_ that the possibility of Tony losing it was suddenly a looming in his awareness. 

Tony bucked against him and gasped, "Jesus, Clint. _Easy_ ," but followed it with sounds that were definitely not complaining noises. Clint slowed it down anyway. Tony was probably doing more work than he'd intended to, and Clint could just about hear the whining and complaining about Clint banning him from binge-building but then making him exert himself.

"There you go," Tony moaned, when he shifted both their weights for a better angle, "Just like that. Good, Clint."

_That_ hit with a wash of quiet pleasure that Clint knew he couldn't give in to. He concentrated on Tony, and the way the muscles in Tony's stomach worked, as Clint withdrew and pumped back into him. Keeping it lazy and slow the way Tony wanted. 

"Don't come." 

Tony managed to make it sound like a proper command, even though he was panting--shallow and interspersed with little gaspy noises that would totally ruin the image he was trying to project if he let them turn into moans the way they clearly wanted to.

Clint cast a questioning look up at him, and Tony clarified, "You don't get to come," and fuck. _Fuck_. He really _was_ supposed to just be servicing Tony. Getting Tony off in his giant fucking bed and on his silky damn sheets and Clint should say something about that, and about not being Tony's goddamn sex toy, but if Tony wanted him to be, then--

Clint nodded. Had to swallow twice before he managed a raspy, "Yes."

It made everything narrow down to Tony. The way his eyes were closed, but his mouth was open, a little, and the way he wasn't talking anymore, but breathing in time to the way his body was rocking to meet Clint's. The way he felt in Clint's hand, hard and slick and hot, and then he'd come and Clint was waiting, still all the way inside him and panting hard himself. Swallowing to try to get his voice to work while he watched Tony's ribs rise and fall with heaving breaths.

"Tony," he pleaded, as soon as it seemed like it wouldn't ruin Tony's buzz. "Tony, c'mon."

"Nope. Not this time. Come here."

Clint swallowed, and pulled out. Slow, hissing at how good that still felt, shuddering at the loss of sensation. And then Tony was sitting up and kissing his face, sloppy and making loud, silly _smoochy_ noises, like they'd been playing and he wasn't the cause of Clint's brain cells burning out. "You did great, Barton. _Perfect_." He wrapped his hand loosely around Clint's cock and stroked lightly, and shushed at the choked noise Clint made. "I just want you like this for awhile. You think can do that?"

With all the things Tony was trying to be careful of, _this_ was low on Clint's list of preferred domination options, but it also felt good to be Tony's, and to let Tony selfishly use him, even if Tony maybe just thought that it was _safe_. Even Tony continuing to tease him wasn't likely to hurt or kill him. Probably. Maybe. 

Clint tucked his head against Tony's shoulder and nodded. Murmured "Yeah. Okay," and turned his head enough to lay kisses on Tony's neck and throat, rocking into Tony's hand as his stroking slowed. Tony kissed him again, then pulled them both down. Shoved at Clint until he had them both on their sides and could mumble lazy praise against the back of Clint's neck while Clint tried to slow his breathing and convince his cock it was really a no-go and to settle the hell down.

He could hear Tony making content little noises at his back, pressed close and with one arm draped over Clint in a way that let him slide his fingers in under the collar. Like he was checking the fit or keeping the material off Clint's skin. His thumb was a firm pressure, just for a couple of seconds, before Tony relaxed his grip. 

"I'm not going anywhere," Clint reminded him, when Tony didn't let go. Just kept his hand there, loosely pressed to Clint's throat.

"You better not," Tony said, "I'm going to make sure you're okay this time. So shut up and let me work here, Barton."

Clint was _fine_. He thought maybe he should be hovering over Tony, no matter who'd been giving the orders, but he shut up and let Tony hang on and murmur, _good, you did good_ into his ear.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Banner for harcourt's "Toxicity"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/631260) by [Neffie (originalneffie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originalneffie/pseuds/Neffie)




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